


"Revenge"

by wily_one24



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-19
Updated: 2006-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-05 19:22:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wily_one24/pseuds/wily_one24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bad things happen to good people...</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Revenge"

**Author's Note:**

> **Characters:** Veronica, Lamb, ensemble, mentions of L/V.  
>  **Rating:** Hard R... and not the good kind.  
>  **Disclaimer:** Not mine, this is why.  
>  **Spoilers:** Set post 2.22 and pre-season three.
> 
> Yeah, I don't know. It happened. This is not a 'shipper fic, just so's we're clear.
> 
>  **A/N #2:** I have no idea how this came about, apparently I just felt the need to randomly torture my favourite character. I wasn't even going to post this, because I see it as little more than a gratutious, irredeemable torture fic, but [](http://fickledame.livejournal.com/profile)[**fickledame**](http://fickledame.livejournal.com/) convinced me to both finish and post it. So, uh, blame her!

*~*~*~*

It really is too easy to push right through the front desk and into his office.

Apparently, both Inga and Sacks know not to bother stopping Veronica when she has her resolve face on. Of course, given the looks they give each other as she passes them, all raised eyebrows and half smiles; they might just hate their boss as much as she does.

Almost.

“Okay, I’m here.”

She doesn’t wait for him to speak, just crashes his door open and stands right in front of his desk. In return for such pleasantries, Lamb doesn’t react, he waits a whole twelve seconds before looking up from the file he’s pretending to read, hand twirling a pencil beside his head.

When he does look at her his eyes are highly amused, even if his face is a mask of boredom.

“So I see.”

Veronica rolls her eyes.

“Look, we can do this all day, but I have a shift at the Hut in half an hour, so I’d rather we get this over with quickly.”

His eyes travel up and down slowly and she can just see the curl of his lip when he takes in her work skirt and vest.

“And this is?”

She crosses her wrists in front of her. Not even Blind Freddy would mistake the gesture as submissive or in any way giving him the upper hand.

“I’m turning myself in. You obviously think you have something on me, so I’m just saving you the time of getting your lackeys out there to bring me in. Charge me, so I can prove how much of an ass you are and be on my way to serving coffee and cake.”

He laughs.

“As much as I’m sure there’s several extra curricular activities I could charge you for, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Then he winks, he damn well winks at her and she grits her teeth. “Believe me, when I find something good, I’ll let you know.”

She’s reached the end of her rope.

“You’re having me followed!” At his eyebrows skyrocketing into his receding hairline, she narrows her eyes. “What? You didn’t think I’d be able to spot a couple of undercovers tailing me day and night? What is it this time? Has to be serious for you to spare that kind of department resource.”

“Seriously.” Lamb spreads his hands out, clearly amused at her rant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

This, she wasn’t expecting, and it kinda takes the wind out of her sails.

“You don’t want to accuse me of anything?”

“You seem disappointed, Veronica.”

She blinks.

“I’m free to go?” Then it dawns on her. “You want me to start my shift then you’re gonna have some deputies arrest me in front of everyone, aren’t you? God, can’t you just…?”

“Veronica?” He steeples his hands in front of his face, eyes glowing with laughter. “I don’t have anything on you. I’m not charging you with anything. And I’m not having you followed.”

Okay, that’s it. She’s had enough, he’s obviously not going to make it easy on her and she’s just stretching out his twisted fun by being here in the first place, letting him get to her like that. Fine, if he wants to play, Veronica can do the same.

“Sure. Yes.” So she nods. “Obviously. Random people always hover around me, watching my every move.”

He sighs, deep, as if he’s truly bothered.

“I have work to do.” Gesturing at the file he hasn’t even bothered to close, he grins. “Real work, not imaginary work from the overactive mind of the likes of you. So, if you don’t mind…”

“Fine.” It’s a huff and it’s childish and she just can’t help it. “But don’t think I can’t evade your tail, deputy.”

She hits the tone of that last word with the scorn it deserves, the kind of scorn Leo never got. And, just because he’s Donald Lamb and he can, he waits until she’s done her little spin, walked over to the door and is just about to stride all the way through it before he coughs.

“Oh, and Veronica?” He smirks when he nods at her. “If I wanted my tail anywhere near you, you wouldn’t be able to evade it.”

She screws up her face, giving him exactly what he wants when she can’t even come up with a half decent reply.

“Ew.”

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, will you?”

***

The door hasn’t even finished closing when Lamb reaches for the telephone and hits speed dial.

He doesn’t waste time with pleasantries.

“Update?”

“Update?” The voice scratches through, bored and amused. “She’s leaving your office. Right now, as a matter of fact. If you need an…”

Impatience surges through him.

“I’m glad you think this is a laughing matter.”

“Can’t be that bad, can it?” There’s something absolutely infuriating about the voice on the other end, part superiority and part casual. “I mean, hiring outside forces when you’ve got a whole Sheriff’s department at your fingertips?”

If there’s one thing Donald Lamb hates, it’s people who think they know so much, when they obviously know so little. Yeah, he’s well aware of his issues with superiority, he just doesn’t give much of a damn. He doesn’t have to; he’s the goddamn Sheriff.

“You want to get paid? Don’t jerk me around.”

There’s always a trump card somewhere.

“Fine.” And the voice is back to bored again. “She didn’t leave the apartment all morning, except to walk her dog, which took thirty six minutes. Then she got in her car approximately twenty minutes ago and drove to the Sheriff station. Right now, she’s headed to a small café, a drive that takes ten minutes from here, where she’ll probably spend hours serving coffee and pretending she likes it. Then she’s most likely going to go spend a few hours sucking face with the Echolls kid. Then she’s going to go home and do whatever it is teenaged girls do behind their closed doors. You happy?”

“Ecstatic.” He says, the tone of his voice implying anything but.

***

Veronica sighs.

There’s nothing new or particularly interesting about this case. She’s sitting in her car, nursing a thermos of particularly strong coffee. Coffee that she poured straight from the cappuccino machine at work before she left, because if she has to spend several hours sitting outside a seedy hotel waiting for someone to get their jollies and then show their face, she deserves to have something that doesn’t taste like dirty dishwater, thank you very much.

She waits and she sighs and she wishes there was something, anything that set this case aside from the multitude of all their other sordid and tawdry divorce slash cheating slash impulse control problem cases. It’s just another downtrodden wife with suspicions of her low life husband spending his halfhearted affections on somebody else.

If these guys were to smile at their spouses every now and again, maybe lash out on a bouquet of flowers, then the women would be far less likely to suspect foul play. But they would always cheat and they would always fall short.

Life is like that.

Behind her Backup begins to growl, because even though she’s still taking cases her father doesn’t know about and wouldn’t approve of if he did, she’s still cautious. It’s a deep rumbling in the back of his throat that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

“What is it, boy?”

Her neck strains as she looks in the rearview, eye scouring the landscape. She sees nothing. Another brief search of the street ahead of her provides nothing as well. As far as she knows, she and her car are alone. And she should know, she spent a great deal of effort evading the two hacks sitting in their car across from the apartment complex. As if she wouldn’t be able to trace them back to Lamb with a few quick strikes of the keyboard on her laptop.

Backup doesn’t let up, though, his growling getting louder and more insistent.

“Backup, chill.”

He doesn’t.

It makes her fingers tremble as she snaps the lens back on her camera and shoves it across to the seat next to her. She hates the way even her elbows seem to shake and her chest tightens. There is nobody near the car, not that she can see, but she knows from experience that the unseen is always worse.

Her fear scares her.

“Who’s there?”

Never show fear. That’s the first rule. And she’s totally breaking it as her voice rattles in her throat, breaking on the first syllable, as she quickly winds the window up. Cranking the handle as if it’s a lifesaver. She should have brought Logan, even if he spent the entire night bitching about boredom or making lewd comments and tracing his fingers in wrongbutohsoveryright places that drive them both crazy by the end of it.

Her other hand reaches for her bag, two words echoing through her head; taser and phone.

A short, sharp yelp escapes her throat when Backup’s growl suddenly turns to a bark.

“Dammit. Quit it.” She drops the handle on her bag and tries to fumble at the keys in the ignition instead. “There’s nobody…”

Her words are cut off as the window next to her explodes, shards of glass scratching at her face and arms as she raises them to protect herself. A scream escapes her lips as she feels hands reach in and grab her forearms.

Backup’s barks become loud and grating, infused with threat and helplessness in the backseat.

Her whole body goes stiff, resistant, as she’s pulled from the car.

She sees and feels everything in slow motion. The tall, black clad figure that’s stronger than her, clutching at her arms and dragging her from the window, the ragged shards of glass tearing at her abdomen, the second dark clad figure holding a trash can lid against the back window, preventing Backup from breaking the glass like he’s so desperately trying to do.

Her legs twist around the head of her seat, a last ditch attempt to keep them from getting her. One of the hands lets her left wrist go to dig at her hip, trying to free her. She flails at it, her hand scrambling down her body, trying to break his grasp on her, slipping in the blood that wells in the gashes there.

Her screams turn into desperate rasps in her throat.

She can’t stop struggling, flailing, twisting, screaming. Anything, just trying to get away. There are too many images in her head of who and how and exactly how much she doesn’t want this to happen. They can’t be Lamb’s men, because he’s a prick and an ass and the biggest thorn in her side now that all the other contenders are dead, but he wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t have her attacked like this.

The hand digging into her hip suddenly grabs her own flailing, clawing hand and tosses it aside. She grabs at the first thing she can and feels the cold glass of the windscreen as she hears the sound of cloth and foam and the tearing of the head of her seat between her knees.

Eventually the pressure is too much, fingers twisting too painfully as they move from her hip to the top corner of her thigh, and her legs let go. She’s pulled from the car and an elbow hits the side of her face. It shuts her up instantly as she reels from it, gasping, doubling over.

A dark sack falls over her head, covering her, and everything goes black.

She can taste the drug they’ve laced the cloth with.

***

He’s tired.

It’s one am and he’s tired and he should be in bed, but no. He’s also restless and awake and driving around for no good reason other than to blink wearily at the side streets. There’s nothing happening, of course there’s nothing happening, this is his town and he likes to stay ahead. That’s why he’s here, to make sure nothing is happening. There’s also a strip joint five blocks up and they have the best girls

At least, that’s what he tells himself, it has nothing to do with the fact the tensions that ratchet up his spine the longer things stay quiet.

Not at all.

Lamb is a simple man. He gets up, he goes to work, he comes home, and he occasionally likes to see some half naked women grinding against a pole. The fact that his job makes him Sheriff of Balboa County and gives him power he could only otherwise dream about in his warm wet ones, well, that’s just gravy, isn’t it?

He sees a familiar black LeBaron parked to the side of the street up ahead.

Although, a man could get lucky if he plays his cards right, and Lamb hesitates for just a second to scan the rest of the street. He can’t see the car following her, but that’s the whole point, right?

This late at night, he could write Veronica up for any number of charges. He’s got a long standing dream of catching her in the middle of playing sleuth, dressed in the skimpy costumes he’s seen her wear, and writing her up for solicitation.

The charges wouldn’t stick, of course, but it would be funny as fuck to watch her fume while he does it.

He smiles lazily as he pulls the car to a stop and idly puts the flashing red cherry on the roof. The red swings all around the road, highlighting her car at regular intervals. If only this had happened months ago. He can just about see the flush of humiliation climbing her cheeks if that lawyer had asked her if she’d ever been picked up for charges of solicitation as she sat in front of a courtroom. In front of everyone. In front of her father.

Luck is not his lady tonight, not that she ever is, in fact he has strong suspicions that Luck has long since stopped being a lady and now turns tricks for whoever has the biggest wad of cash.

The driver’s side window is smashed in and he can see blood on the windscreen. Not to mention the large, completely rabid dog that charges him as he approaches. Fuck. There is also, he notes again as he scans the surrounding street again, no car trailing hers at a safe distance. He grabs his phone and doesn’t even bother lying to himself about why he has that number programmed into his cell.

“Hello?”

The voice is, understandably, groggy and slurred with sleep.

“Keith, I need you to not ask questions and come get your dog.”

“What? Who is this?” The slur is slowly fading away into confusion. “Donald? Donald Lamb?”

“Yes, now come calm your dog the fuck down.”

Surely the man can hear the snapping and the growling through the phone.

“Backup?” And he can hear the sudden snap to clarity. “Where’s Veronica? What happened to Veronica?”

“Keith.” He bites his lip. “Can’t you just do what I say for once? Just once? I’ll explain when you get here, but I need you to get your goddamned dog before I call Animal Control and they deal with it.”

It’s a few seconds of giving the address before Lamb punches down on the end call button with his thumb and immediately dials another number.

“Hello?”

Goddamned fuck. This voice is slow and hazy with sleep, too.

“Aren’t you supposed to be tailing the Mars family?”

“Uh, yeah.” And the snap to awake happens sooner this time than it did with Keith. “We are. We’re parked outside the apartment right now. There hasn’t been any movement in hours… oh, I think that’s the father now… you’re good.”

“You’re fired.” Lamb snarls. “You’re fucking fired.”

He snaps the cell closed with a vicious click. Maybe Veronica is right when she looks at him with that smug grin; maybe he and his entire team are useless as fuck.

***

It’s not a slow awakening.

Veronica comes to and finds herself stumbling, her feet falling over each other as hands clutching hard underneath her armpits and at her shoulders drag her. There are at least two of them and she’s still in the dark, dank hood. Her mouth opens and her back twists.

A foot slides underneath hers, uncompromising and firm as she stumbles into them, allowing them to keep dragging her forward.

She doesn’t stop struggling.

“This is her?”

Veronica stops cold at the voice. She doesn’t know it, she’s never heard it before, but she knows where she is. And she knows the most likely candidates that have her. She knows why she didn’t have a chance in hell of escaping before.

The voice has an Irish accent.

“This little cheerleader is the one you were talking about?”

“Don’t underestimate her, Cor, she’s learned a lot from her old man.”

Yup, that’s definitely Liam Fitzpatrick on her right.

“She’s kinda hot, too.”

And Danny Boyd to her left. Veronica hates being right.

“Well then,” The other voice comes closer, “let’s take a look.”

The hands at her arms don’t let go, but the hood is drawn from her head and Veronica has to blink several times in the light before she finds herself staring into the face of someone unmistakably related to the biggest crime family in Neptune.

Oh, shit.

***

Lamb hears the over-revving of the car before he sees it turn the corner. He knows who it is.

Keith doesn’t even bother parking, stopping the car in the middle of the road as he barges out. Lamb sees the odd mixture of sleep pants and tee shirt, covered with a jacket and topped off with old sneakers. He doubts even Keith knows what he’s wearing.

“Where is she?” There’s a fire in Keith’s eyes that Lamb knows. “Where’s Veronica?”

He gestures to her abandoned car further up.

“For all I know she’s in the goddamn trunk, but I can’t get close enough to check. Call your dog off.”

As Keith walks towards the LeBaron, calling for the dog gently, Lamb knows the exact second he sees the broken glass and the bloody handprint on the windscreen. There’s no way in hell she’s in the trunk and if she is, it’s not going to be good.

He watches as Keith kneels on the ground, running his hands over the dog. The mutt is trembling, quivering with fear and anger and he’s stopped barking, but the growls still sound low and deep from his throat. When he’s sure that Keith has a good enough grip, Lamb walks over to the car quickly.

“Why are you here?” Keith calls over, voice already alert and analyzing. “Why aren’t there other squad cars here? You should call for support.”

“Because.” Lamb taps the trunk and he knows it’s going to be empty, but his chest still sinks a little as it sounds hollow and there’s no response. His eyes scan the interior, trying to figure out the hows and whys of it. “I already know who’s got her.”

“What?” There’s anger bristling under that question and Lamb prepares himself for the onslaught. “What do you mean you know?”

He doesn’t waste time, standing up straighter and flipping open his cell. It’s times like this he misses the shoulder walkie on his uniform.

“Cormac Fitzpatrick was released two days ago.” He dials the switchboard and his eyes meet Keith’s. “Word is he’s got a hard on for you.”

***

“What…?” Veronica can’t stop the plea in her voice. Yeah, never show fear, right. “What do you want?”

“What do I want?” His neck and arms are covered in tattoos and it’s not nearly as endearing on him as it is on Weevil as he pretends to seriously think about that and watches her with eyes glinting with amusement and threat. It makes the salt flow past her teeth and over her tongue. “I think I want the last twelve years of my life back.”

He pushes his face right into hers, nose-to-nose, mouth to mouth and eyes to eyes. He doesn’t hate her; he doesn’t feel anything for her besides what a cat feels for the mouse before he tears it to shreds. She thinks she’d rather see burning passion there.

“Think your daddy can give it back?”

It slams into her, her father’s voice calmly reading Kendall’s emails out. Prisoner 246219, San Quentin, Cormac Fitzpatrick, Liam’s older brother and patriarch of the Fitzpatrick clan. She’d wondered how he’d known that from just the prisoner number, but now she knows.

His breath smells of mint and she wonders if it’s going to take four and half weeks until she can brush her teeth without gagging again. The same amount of time it took before she could look at an open flame without clawing at her throat.

Thirty-two days and five hours, actually, she timed herself.

“So, you’re the Sheriff’s little daughter?” He steps back, thankfully, and Veronica takes a breath. “You know, my brother in law here, Danny, is right. You grew up nice.”

Veronica stops breathing at the appreciative tone in his voice.

“They bloodied you up a little.” His hand comes forward and his finger traces a line down the side of her face, she can feel the swelling already and knows she’s going to have a hell of a bruise. “A lot actually.”

Her stomach muscles contract, pulling in and away when his hand travels down to play with the shreds of her work shirt, the vest having been discarded long ago in the car. Her teeth close in hard on her bottom lip when he pulls it apart, buttons flying. The sleeves hang around her shoulders, but the skin of her chest and abdomen are bared.

Danny is holding her left arm tightly, but impersonal, he’s just getting the job done. It’s Liam whose fingers dig in the most cruelly. Pinching the tendons under her right arm and jerking her to keep her still when she tries to struggle. She hasn’t forgotten the feeling of his hand around her throat and the knowledge that he would have pressed harder if she’d given him reason.

Cormac’s hands have been gentle with her, personal in a way the other two haven’t, and it’s him she’s most terrified of.

“No.” She finds her voice and hates it all in the same second, hates the crack and the weakness and the plea. “Please, no.”

“No?” His eyes glitter at her meanly as he steps even further back. She can feel the terror, inching up her spine each vertebrae at a time, popping up a notch or twelve when he pulls handcuffs from his pocket. “I don’t believe I was giving you a choice.”

One tilt of his head spurs the others into action and she’s brought forward again, pushed several feet further into the darkness. The windows are small and high, she can’t help scanning the room and she thinks they’re underground.

Backup couldn’t fit through the glass in those windows, let alone her.

“Please.” She begs again, even as her right hand is forced forward and she feels the cold metal close around her wrist. “Please, stop.”

Danny chuckles next to her, the sounds of it sliding down her back with drops of sweat.

“This’ll go a whole lot easier if you save your throat.” Cormac winks at her as he reaches for her left hand. “You’ll need that later.”

It’s sudden, the way he closes his fingers around her elbows and jerks them up. Her shoulders wrench as he stretches her hands up above her head, the skin burning with irregular movement. His body is hard as the arch of her spine presses her front into him. She can’t help the snap of her head back and immediately she sees the hook.

“When I have you screaming.” Cormac finishes with more than a little relish.

All hands fall away and she’s left dangling.

“Please let me go.” There are tears in her eyes as she twists, tugging at the bonds. All it does is grate at the skin of her wrists, pulling against the bones painfully. “Please, I’ll do anything.”

“Well, now.” Cormac eyes her carefully, cupping his chin thoughtfully in one hand. “Isn’t that interesting?”

He’s backed himself against a wall and she watches him reach across to a small control. The red button, she realizes, is connected to the chain above her and it slowly stretches her up. Her whole body arches as she struggles to remain in contact with the ground.

Eventually, she’s left with her toes scrabbling for purchase and her shoulders screaming for release.

“Liam, gag her, she’s getting too loud already.”

***

“No.” Lamb spins around and takes a deep breath, spreading his chest out and drawing himself up to his full height. “Are you listening to me? No.”

Keith doesn’t back down.

“For god’s sake, Keith, get back in your car with your dog, drive home and wait until I call you.”

“I’m coming with you.”

He seethes for just a second, before he remembers this isn’t a bitch fight to see who has the biggest balls.

“Look, I’ll get her back and when I do, she’s going to want to curl up with fluffy slippers and hot chocolate and everything else teen girls love, with her dog and more than likely you.” He can see the truth of it seep into Keith’s eyes. “They want you there, that’s the whole point. If you walk in, I can’t protect you as well. That’s not what she needs.”

It’s a low down dirty thing to use Veronica to keep him leashed at this point and if Donald Lamb had a conscience at all, he might feel bad about doing it.

He doesn’t, so that works out nicely.

***

She’s expecting a cloth gag, a rag as dank as the hood that was over her head, a man’s tie or a woman’s scarf, something soft to block her tongue from working properly. She only gets the last bit right. Liam grasps her chin between his thumb and fingers and forces her mouth open, shoving a small rubber ball between her teeth. The whole contraption clips shut behind her head and she can’t even move her jaw up and down.

She feels like she’s going to swallow her tongue.

Her nostrils burn with the sudden need to pull oxygen inside her lungs.

“They said you were a fiery one, Veronica Mars.” Cormac steps back into her line of sight from somewhere off to the side. “It kinda makes me wanna see how much.”

He’s teasing her, trying to push her further and she doesn’t know into what. She’s already begged and the tears are still flowing. She can’t even scream past the taste of rubber. All she can do is whimper as he reaches out and traces the tip of his finger down the side of her arm.

“I’ve been locked away with nobody but men for company for twelve years.” He whispers it, hot and sweaty in her ear. “I can’t tell you how incredibly frustrating that is.”

Her eyes snap shut as she trembles against the hand playing with the rags of a shirt still hanging from her shoulders. The toe of her right shoe twitches against the floor and she can feel it pull all the way through her shoulders and up to her wrists.

His hand closes on the tight scrunch of muscles at the back of her neck.

“Open your eyes, Veronica.”

He squeezes and it makes her whimper as she hurries to obey. To the side, she can see Liam watching with detached interest and Danny as he licks his bottom lip. The fingers at the back of her neck close, one by one, over the collar of her shirt.

The remains of her shirt are torn suddenly and the scream rising in the back of her throat sounds like nothing more than a muffled groan as the pain of her wrenched joints sears through her body.

“A man could get very desperate after twelve years, don’t you think?”

She’s got nothing left but her bra, her skirt, stockings and sensible flat-soled shoes. Cormac stands next to her, just barely touching her skin, and she can feel the tight muscles of jail yard weights in the heat that pours off him.

If she turns her head, she could see him, but she won’t give him that as she stares straight ahead.

“And you?” She feels her scalp prickle when he begins playing with her hair, picking strands of it up and pulling lightly. “You’re just a little doll, aren’t you?”

Breathe in, her brain screams at her desperately, and don’t forget to breathe out. Breathe in, swallow, don’t scream, and breathe out. Breathe in, Veronica; don’t think about the metal that bites into your thumb joint when you squeeze your fingers into fists, don’t scream, and don’t forget to breathe out.

\-- _Daddy, please save me this time, please…_ \--

“I wouldn’t worry, though.” Cormac’s voice comes thick and heavy and fetid against her ear as his hand flattens itself on her shoulder blade. There’s something vaguely threatening about the way it sits there, hovering over her skin and the thin white strap of her bra. “As desperate as a man gets, I still like my women willing.”

Her body jerks away from him by instinct and she groans at the added pain.

“Don’t worry, little girl. I’m not going to hurt you like that.” His other hand comes to rest flat just below her collarbone. He’s sandwiched her between his hands, front to back, and there’s an edge to his voice that makes her want to close her eyes and run. “A man learns a lot of different ways to hurt people in jail.”

She hears and feels the sudden crack.

Veronica’s knees give out and not even the ball gag can stop her screaming.

***

The River Stix is too damn obvious, but he’d been hoping.

So Lamb takes his dejection to a few places. Places that just aren’t listed in Miss Minchin’s ‘Proper Guide to Policing A Community’. Hell, he’s fairly sure not even Keith knows about some of them. The wad of bills and greasy slick smile still work if he doesn’t have a uniform. Just like anywhere else in the world: the lie has to be sweet and the wad has to be big.

Eye wateringly, nut crunching big.

A piece of paper is slipped into his palm; sticky and folded so often it’s barely even tissue anymore. He waits until he’s out of the bar, back in his car and several blocks away before he even looks. His eyes squint as he reads the address.

He really hopes she’s still alive for the amount of money he just forked over.

***

They’ve lowered the chain so that her feet can rest flat on the floor and she’s stopped silently begging for her father to break through.

Veronica can’t even struggle anymore, she trembles as she tries to stand as still as she possibly can. Each and every movement is agony and she finds herself wishing for the simplicity of a trapped, fiery death. Or the quick fall off the top of a building. Anything.

Anything but the burning all along her entire back.

Her breaths come in labored pants now, hard and fast, puffed through nostrils she’s sure are going to be red and swollen with effort. If she makes it out of here, her traitorous brain supplies.

“I’ve got one last message for your daddy, think you can give it to him?”

She doesn’t answer, because she knows he doesn’t really care. The words should give her hope, a brief flickering; an assurance that she will make it out. But she doesn’t think it’s going to be that easy. It’s not as if they’ve gone to all this trouble to ensure she passes a love note across town.

The hand that pushes her skirt up makes her think that he’s a liar.

“Liam tells me you ran out on him a few months back, just when you were having fun. Is that true? Because, if so, that was very rude.”

That’s when she hears the buzzing and fresh tears pour out of her eyes.

\-- _Don’t move, Veronica, don’t you dare move_.--

It burns.

***

The place is deserted when he kicks the door in.

Dark and empty, not even dust bunnies blow across the floorboards. Lamb swears, instantly convinced that he’s got the wrong address. That he’s been screwed royally, in more ways than one. Three other late night officers begin to crawl over the place.

The gun lowers as he walks from room to room, his forearms aching from keeping it steady.

But it’s not the wrong address; he feels it in his gut as his eyes fall on the door leading down to the basement. His hand scratches at the wall as he slowly takes the steps, finding the light switch easily and flicking it. It’s an empty room, abandoned. There’s nobody left.

Except the girl strung up by her wrists.

“Shit, Veronica!”

She twitches when he gets close and he takes it as a good sign that she’s still alive.

“Are you okay?” The look she gives him when he rounds to her front tells him that she’s most likely going to live and he has to agree that it really is one of the more stupid questions he’s ever asked in his entire life. Then he sees the gushing track marks down her face, the tension across her features and the gag in her mouth. “Fuck, okay, hang on.”

His gun nestles easily into the holster as he takes his keys out of his pocket. The Mars family aren’t the only ones who know how to pick locks. As he steps closer, her eyes widen and she shakes her head. Not much, but softly, slightly, enough for him to notice.

“Just relax, okay?” The frightened look in her eyes makes him nervous. “I’m just going to get you down.”

She doesn’t settle, her face getting tighter and her eyes getting louder. He hears some of the most gut wrenchingly awful sounds that he thinks are pleas coming from her throat.

“Veronica, it’s me.” And he’s not stupid, he knows that he’s nowhere near the top of her list of favorite people. He’s fairly certain she has a whole separate list just for him and there’s nothing favorite about it. But she has to realize that he’s not the fucker that did this. “It’s Donald Lamb. I’m here to help, okay? I can’t get you out if I don’t get those cuffs off.”

The sounds in her throat become a screech when he reaches up to examine the locks.

He’s standing in front of her, he can’t help it, and if he wants to get a good look at the cuffs he’s going to have to keep pressing closer. Her face reaches his chest and for a second he thinks she’s going to relax against him.

He doesn’t expect her knee in his groin.

“Fuck, Veronica!” White-hot pain shoots up to his kidney and he doubles over, hands coming to grasp at the sudden pain radiating up from between his legs. And he tries not to hear the sound of a scream trying to push out of her mouth. “I’m trying to help!”

But her eyes keep pleading him, begging him for something.

“Okay, okay, hang on.” The steps he takes to return to her are slower and more cautious. “Don’t hit me again, I’m going to take the gag out. Okay? You’re okay with that?”

This seems to calm her and she stays still, her only movement the heaving of her breaths coming in spurts. His fingers inch along the taut band of elastic stretched around her jaw to the back of her head, quickly finding the clasp and releasing it.

The ball comes out of her mouth wet and slimy and she gasps, big deep breaths.

“My back… my back…” It’s all she can manage as she pants, gulping down air. He tries not to hear the scratched, drawn out sound of her voice. “My back… my…”

A slightly sick feeling enters his stomach when he walks around her in a circle.

“Oh, jesusfuck.”

He doesn’t even know how he gets the cell open and to his ear so quickly, but he’s shouting at the paramedics, telling them they should have been here five minutes ago if they want to keep their jobs and also to bring a face wedge while they’re at it. Then he calls over his shoulder at the men upstairs.

“She’s down here!”

***

Veronica is going to cry again, she knows it, in the bone weary way she finally lets herself believe that it’s over. Even if she has to be rescued by none other than Donald Lamb. At this point she wouldn’t care if Aaron Echolls rose from the dead and came to find her, as long as he got her out.

Everything hurts too much to care about the particulars.

“The paramedics are on their way.” And she’s not used to this side of him, the side that newspaper photographers and little children get to see just before Election Day; soft and caring and actually doing his job. “But I’m still going to have to take those cuffs off.”

She doesn’t want to cry in front of him, but she doesn’t have a choice.

“No!” It falls out of her mouth without her permission. “God, no, please. Please, please, please…”

“Veronica.” He doesn’t touch her again, just moves until his face is directly in front of hers. “I’m not going to lie, it’s going to hurt, but we need to get you down.”

She’s hated those cheap blue eyes for as long as she can remember, but right now she’s more than grateful for them as he holds her attention. She doesn’t want to focus on the footsteps behind her, the comments and exclamations of voices she barely recognizes as night shift deputies. She really doesn’t want to focus on his hands rising up to her wrists again.

“Don’t kick me again.” He tries to make his voice light, but she can hear the stretch of his vocal chords. “But I have a plan.”

Veronica closes her eyes when he steps forward again, pressing right into her. He shifts then, crouching just a little so that his knees bow forward and she ends up falling just a little bit forward.

“Lean on me, okay?” His voice is serious and calm and she finds herself wishing that he’d make some wiseass remark. “When I release you, keep your arms up, lean them on me.”

In the time between Cormac, Liam and Danny leaving and Lamb charging down the staircase, Veronica’s fairly sure she blacked out, she has no idea how long she’s been hanging there, unable to move. Her arms have become dead weights that ache and throb.

Her hands are puffy and dead, swollen, and she can feel the bite of metal as it scratches her release at the bony joints of her wrists, feels the wetness of blood welling there. She doesn’t know exactly what they did back there, but her back and shoulders scream in agony and she knows she can’t move her arms even if she tried.

It would be a relief to finally get the weight off her ankles and knees if it didn’t make the pain triple and spread like wildfire through her blood and to each nerve ending. There’s no other choice but to bury her face into Lamb’s shirt and bite down hard.

He grunts a little.

“I’ve got you.” It comes as a whisper in her ear and it surprises her a little. “You’re doing good.”

She doesn’t want it to be him, holding her up, making sure her arms stay above her head, not moving. She doesn’t want it to be him letting her lean, holding her with care. It makes her sob. And she doesn’t want him to see that, either.

***

He’s a simple man. He likes to keep things easy, draw a line and stick to it. Sausage and egg for breakfast? Good. Bacon? Bad; too clichéd. Miller and Coors? Good. Budweiser? Bad. Donald Lamb? Very, very good. Veronica Mars? Evil spawn of Satan sent to be a pain in his goddamn side.

Easy. Simple.

Except that line is being crossed as he waits for the paramedics to arrive. Sometimes he forgets exactly how small and tiny and fragile she really is. He can still see the disbelief in those smarmy FBI agents’ eyes as he described her, told them they had to be careful with her. He still remembers that she played them all and that the glow of being right was somewhat lessened with the fact that she played him most of all.

Right now, he doesn’t see the bitch he usually portrays her as.

The sound of gurney wheels being lowered to the ground makes her stiffen against him and he instantly begins hushing her again, even as he meets the eyes of the paramedic who has come up behind her and they both flinch.

He’s seen grown men break under less and maybe he’ll tell her that when she’s not half delirious with agony.

They carefully maneuver her, whimpering and biting down on her cheeks, to the waiting gurney. She lays face down, head cradled in the wedge and arms still raised above her head. In this position, he can see the fight slip away from her, see her begin to lose it.

There’s no reason for him to grasp her fingers and even less for her to grip him back.

“Veronica?” He says it softly, but firmly enough to keep her attention away from the men strapping her down and clinically describing the carnage in front of them. “Did they do anything else? Are you hurt anywhere else?”

Her fingers twitch in his and he hears her swallow.

“My thigh, they… inside my thigh.”

There are two paramedics, one deputy and Lamb and they all frown as they look up. Slowly, one of the paramedics lifts her skirt and they all hiss. There’s a bright green clover tattooed on angry red skin high up on the sensitive flesh.

Fuck.

The Fighting Fitzpatricks really wanted to fight this time. There’s no coming back from it now, even though he knows they already have airtight alibis for the entire night, character witnesses, high priced lawyers and Veronica’s word will mean next to nothing.

“I’m gonna call your dad.” He tells her, his thumb tracing patterns across the back of her hands. “He’ll meet us at the hospital.”

“No!” It’s fear in her voice. “Don’t tell him. Not like this. Please.”

She’s making it really hard to say no and he wonders if this is what everyone else feels right before they become her willing lackeys.

“He has to know, Veronica, he’s going out of his mind already.”

***

She passes out again, falling in and out of consciousness and remembering the strangest things along the way.

They strap her down on the gurney, firm wide belts clipping over the backs of her legs and hips, but they cut the straps of her bra away.

One of the deputies is throwing up in the kitchen sink when they roll her by.

This is the first time she’s ridden in an ambulance with the alarm sounding and that realization surprises her, because given everything that’s ever happened in her life she thinks that should have happened sooner.

They tell her that when they get to the hospital, they’ll give her something for the pain. She thinks she tells them it’s too late, but she’s not sure.

Sunlight is just bleeding into the dark and the air is slightly cool when the ambulance doors open in the Emergency bay.

One of the doctors, a woman with a soft voice and softer hands, recognizes her name, asking if it’s really – _that Veronica Mars from the news_ \--.

During all this, Donald Lamb doesn’t let go.

***

He lets go when they finally sedate her and her eyes flutter closed without chance of opening again, her fingers going limp in his.

The curtains whisper blankly as Lamb steps out of the OR and finally looks down to see his gun sticking awkwardly out his holster, not having been placed right, the shoulder of his shirt is torn and wet, and his hands clench of their own accord.

Adrenaline can go fuck itself; he’s never been a fan of the junkie tremors.

There are little half moon indentations in the creases of his fingers, aching and deep, blue in the worst of them, tinged red for the rest. He can feel his blood pulsing through to his fingertips. It matches the ring of dents on his clavicle and he thinks he can feel the echo of teeth.

A loud voice demanding answers to questions makes itself known and he reaches for his back pocket.

“Keith, over here!” He flashes his ID at the security guards, just in case they don’t already know him. “He’s fine, let him through.”

“What happened?” Keith’s face is red and screwed up. “Where is she?”

“Listen.” He says it calmly, evenly, exactly how they’ve all been trained in these situations as he grabs Keith’s shoulders to stop the man speeding through the curtain. “You need to be prepared before you go in there, it’s pretty bad.”

All the color fades as Keith’s eyes drop down to the mess all over his clothes.

“What did they do?”

His mouth opens and closes for a second too long, trying to delay the moment, to come up with the right way to say it. Keith’s eyes bulge with frustration and his shoulders bunch under Lamb’s hands.

“They wish-boned her, Keith.”

It’s one second, a half choked moan that sounds like a growl, and then Keith turns and bashes a fist into the wall. Lamb can practically see the knuckles split as it happens. Keith hisses angry breaths through his teeth and Lamb counts to five before continuing.

“Looks like they hung her up by her wrists and completely dislocated both scapula. That’s the worst of it. They also tattooed a clover on her thigh and there might be some damage to her wrists, various cuts and abrasions all over. They’re assessing the shoulder damage now, but it looks like definite surgery. Steel plates, screws, months of therapy, that sort of thing.”

Nothing more really needs to be said.

Both of them have seen the damage one inmate can do to another, both of them know the viciousness that can be turned from each inmate into a united force against a cop, any cop, but especially the arresting one. It’s a shift, a wave that goes right through Keith, leaving no visible sign except the crinkles that form at the edge of his eyes and mouth.

“Listen to me.” Lamb says firmly. “You need to stay here. Do you hear me? Stay here and focus on her. She’s okay. Leave the rest to me.”

“But…”

“For once in your goddamn life, Keith, let me take care of it.”

They share a look, hard, and he thinks there’s an understanding between them.

“Make it hurt.”

Lamb nods, just once, a quick affirmation as he clicks his tongue inside his mouth. He watches Keith slip in behind the curtain, but doesn’t stay to see or hear anything that follows. There’s not much time and he has a lot of blood to wash from the front of his clothes.

***

She can’t move. 

Her arms are pinned up and away from her and she can’t move them. It makes her throat close up and her body jerk to attention as she tries to wrench herself free, the cries pouring out of her mouth before she can stop them. Hot acid tears pricking her eyes. Her feet come into contact with something metal and it goes crashing to the ground. 

“Veronica! Honey, it’s okay.” 

The voice makes her stop instantly as she manages to open her eyes. 

“Dad?” And then he’s there in front of her, standing over her and reaching out to cup her cheeks. “Dad, I…”

He tries to smile, but it doesn’t really reach his eyes. 

“Sh, it’s okay.” His thumbs run under her eyes, over the sides of her face and his fingers through her hair, as if just touching her makes him feel better. “You’re going to be fine. You’re in the hospital.”

Her breath comes a little easier as she blinks a few times, the room coming into focus around her. The feeling of being trapped makes itself clear when she notices the body cast they have her in, thick plaster surrounding her torso and stretching her arms out in front of her, held up by a frame. She looks like a bad advert for medical insurance. 

“It was the Fitzpatricks.” Her voice is scratched out and raw, but she can’t stop the words slipping out. “Cormac and Liam and Danny. They… they…”

“Sh.” His fingers are soft and soothing against her temple. “We know. You don’t need to worry about that now. All you have to do is sit back and let us all pamper you silly.”

His voice is light and his words soft, but he’s not being as reassuring as she thinks he’s trying to be. She stretches her neck a little, testing the boundaries of the collared cast, the new smothering feel of it around her chest and arms. 

“So it’s bad?” Maybe she doesn’t want to know, but she needs to. “Really bad?”

The flinch of his face gives him away. 

“You’ll be okay.” 

It sounds rehearsed, as if he’s been saying it all night and day, over and over. And maybe he has. She tries to smile for his sake. 

“I hope they didn’t put me near the children’s ward.” A catch belies the joke in her voice. “I’ll scare them silly trying to clunk around in this mummy get up.”

“They’ve got you on a morphine drip.” He continues with a roll of his eyes, a small acknowledgement to her attempt at humor, but not going so far as to agree with it. “So you probably won’t feel anything until they try to wean you off it. But you’re supposed to try not to jostle anything as much as you can.”

She stops squirming inside the plaster. 

He breaks eye contact and begins to pick up the tray that she’d knocked off the small bedside table on wheels when she woke up as he goes on to describe the damage that was done and the metal pins they had to put in her shoulders, the reconstruction, the weeks she’ll have to spend here and the physical therapy she’ll have to do.

Just when she thinks she’s heard enough and it’s all going to erupt in tears, boiling over until she’ll never stop, his words fall away and he turns to her, cupping her chin again. 

“I’m sorry.” He whispers it like an apology. “They shouldn’t have come after you, you shouldn’t have had to…”

She wants to tell him that it’s okay, but the words don’t come, because it’s really not. 

“I was so scared.” Her face crumples instead. “I didn’t know… I didn’t…”

“You’re okay, now.” He insists, firm and steadfast. “And there’s a police guard on the door to make sure you stay that way. Understand? They’re not coming back.”

Something in his voice makes her look up. In the back of her mind, the sequence begins to come together, the memories of what had happened and when. She can feel it in the curve of her palms. 

“Where’s Lamb?” He’s been awake all night; she can tell in the weakness of his facial expression, he’s usually so much better at hiding things. “He went after them, didn’t he?”

It’s a breath and then he’s smiling again, too large and too false, primping at the pillow behind her. 

“Logan wants to say hi, Wallace too. They’ve both been waiting outside until you wake up.”

***

“Fuck this, man.”

Lamb doesn’t pause once as he stops the car, engages the parking brake and takes his keys out of the ignition. He even whistles a little bit, just for the sake of it. He doesn’t react to the overly hostile voice behind him. There are times to engage in pissing competitions, especially those you know you’re going to win, because there is no other outcome, and then there are times to smile and take the crap, because you need all the help you can get. 

He steps out of the car and casually opens the backdoor, none too gently pulling out one Eli ‘Weevil’ Navarro by the upper arm, biceps and triceps generously expanded by the position of him being cuffed behind his back. Dark eyes glare at him. 

“What’s your problem? Huh? I ain’t done nothin’!”

His jaw works the gum in his mouth for several seconds. 

“You know people, right?”

Weevil spits in the dust at Lamb’s feet. 

“I know Miranda, that’s who I know. You gonna do this right? Or do I have a law suit just about giving me a lap dance right now?”

He chuckles, but he doesn’t feel it. 

“Right, like you know anything about the law.” He breathes in and then snaps, pushing the kid back against the car by his upper chest. “Look, I have exactly zero time for this posturing bullshit. I picked you up at your uncle’s lot for a reason. So, do you know people or not?”

A sneer curls on the kid’s lip. 

“I don’t know nobody no more and you know it. I’m clean.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a pillar of the community, sparkly like a diamond.” Lamb leans a little bit closer, makes his voice low. “But if something happened to someone you know, say your sister or your girl, you’d know enough to people to fix it, right?”

Weevil’s eyes slide to the left and right, as if he’s just now taking in the deserted alley that they’ve stopped in, the absolute lack of any convenient witnesses close by. The dark eyes contract a little. 

“You threatening me?” There’s something slick and greasy in the way the kid’s eyes slide up and down Lamb. “’Cause it would take a major league loser to threaten another man’s girl.”

The words ring familiar, long gone and probably forgotten by everyone else, but there’s sufficient daring in the eyes in front of him for Lamb to recognize the slight. 

“Let’s cut the bullshit, okay? I need to take down some men, I can’t go in alone, you can help.”

“Oh, I get it.” And the smug demeanor on the kid’s face is reminder enough why Lamb doesn’t like him. “You make this deal, I say yes, and suddenly I’m up for charges of taking a hit. What do you think I am? I also know ‘entrapment’, that’s what I know of the law.”

“Fuck you.” It’s Lamb’s turn to spit now, a vicious, gum sticky glob landing in the dirty street. He has the winning shot and he knows it, those two magical words that, when put together, seem to make any man in this goddamn town snap to. “I just spent the last few hours soaking Veronica Mars’ blood out of my shirt and I’m not in the mood for this bullshit.”

“Huh?” Weevil’s double take would be funny under any other circumstance. “What do you mean…? Veronica?”

“That’s right.” He nods, unable and unwilling to keep the smug out of his voice. “Fitzpatricks got her. Liam, big brother Cormac, and Danny Boyd to boot. They took her, strung her up, and tortured her for hours until she passed out.”

He can see the panic hit the kid’s eyes, all the fight draining out of the stance, shoulders and expression falling hard and fast. Lamb has to keep pressing him down, pushing the buttons, because if he lets himself think about his words, think about the situation he’s talking about, then the taste of bile will come back up his throat and all the gum in the goddamn world will be useless. 

There are holes in his story, large cavernous holes that are making Weevil worry about things that never happened, but Lamb doesn’t fill any of them in, because that kind of rage will get results. 

“Doctors are probably still operating right now, trying to fix all the damage they did.” And this part is as true as anything else, because he hasn’t had the courage to call back to the hospital and ask for an update. He’s not even sure he’ll be welcome to one. “And you wanna know the best part? They’ve already got lawyers and witnesses and airtight fucking alibis.”

That’s when the point of this whole mission becomes clear. 

“I walk in as a law man, I can’t do anything but hold them for a few hours. Probably won’t even be able to charge them with dropping litter on the ground. And then they’ll laugh at me and laugh about what they did.”

“Alright.” Weevil hisses in, most likely to stop his words than to portray any grand eagerness to join him. “I’m in. But if that’s what you wanted, why the hell’d you have to cuff me?”

He shrugs, casual, just because he can. 

“Because I was bored.” It’s a sneer into the kid’s shoulder as he snicks the little lock at his wrists. “And because now, if anyone asks your dear, sweet uncle where you were all day when you weren’t working your shift, you have an airtight alibi.”

***

Her stomach rolls in over itself when the metallic scent of water reaches her nostrils. She pulls back, her nose wrinkling as she shakes her head. 

“Just a little bit?” Logan wheedles as he jiggles the plastic cup in front of her face. “Yummy. Full of watery goodness.”

She glares. 

“I can still kick, you know.”

The cup is placed back on the table. 

“Okay, okay.” Logan raises his hands in mock offense. “You win. I was just trying to follow doctor’s orders and keep you hydrated, but fine. Dry out, see if I care.”

Veronica grins a little as she lets her head fall back against the pillow raised high at her back. 

“Oh, you love me.” It’s a tease. “I know you do. Besides, I still have my buddy here.”

It’s a little bit awkward, but she manages to gesture her head in a way that indicates the slinky, clear IV tube that snakes down into the hollow of her neck. 

The look Logan gives her is pure, unadulterated nag. Something that has been mirrored all day in her dad and Wallace’s eyes, all three of them hovering over her. Truthfully, she doesn’t exactly mind. She likes being able to close her eyes and listen to the soft thrum of voices in the small room and not worry about anything, only occasionally drifting in and out of extremely perplexing morphine dreams. 

Their voices ground her and, while she’s still exhausted and appreciates the sleep, she prefers not to completely lose focus. She knows Logan, sitting by her head, has more than once woken her up in the last few hours and stopped her from revealing more than she wants in half mumbled sleep slurry words. 

She was awake before, when the doctor came in to explain in more detail about her injuries and what she can expect in the coming days and weeks. So she knows she’s supposed to keep up her fluids for the express purpose of them being able to take out said IV, but she’s perfectly happy as is. 

Not to mention the sickening feeling that she’s about to turn inside out whenever anything tries to pass her lips. 

“You know.” She gives Logan a smile, trying to coax one out of him. “This whole morphine thing is pretty damn special. No wonder it sells on the black market.”

He doesn’t laugh or even smile and maybe that was too much to hope for, but frankly, she’d settle for anything beyond him looking at her with big, deep liquid eyes. Then he reaches up and touches the side of her head, fingers in her hair, and if one more person does that to her today she’s going to start selling tickets. 

“I should have been there.”

It’s not like she hasn’t been expecting this, it had to come up sooner or later. In fact, the only reason she hasn’t gotten the four hour director’s edition cut of “You Shouldn’t Be Doing This Kind Of Work” and its sequel “You Need To Do Normal Girl Things” from her father is because this didn’t happen during one of her cases.

For a change. 

She’s still expecting the extended “Time To Get A Job In A Clothes Store, Don’t You Even Think About Coming Near The Office Ever Again, Young Lady” remix when he gets back. He was finally convinced to leave her alone for half an hour to go home and change, getting some rest was stretching things too far, apparently, but at least he’ll be refreshed. Wallace tactfully cleared out, too. 

And now she’s alone with Logan who’s giving her the same big doe eyes he did after that night on the roof of the Grand. 

“What would you have done, Logan?” Her voice is soft and calm and only slightly bored, the same words coming out of her mouth that did only weeks ago. They’re both still rehearsed enough to carry these roles on without pausing. “You only would have put yourself in danger, too.”

There’s one big difference between that night and this and she sees it all too late, in the deeply buried glint that hides behind all the worry in his eyes, the throb of his pulse through his slightly clenched fist. 

Cassidy is gone, there was nothing Logan could do after the fact, but they both know that the Fitzpatricks aren’t. 

“No.” The pleading in her voice makes her wince; it’s too close to how it was the night before. “Logan, don’t. Promise me, okay? Please?”

“’Course not.” It’s a whisper, an empty promise to the top of her head as he leans in to kiss it. “Don’t you worry.”

And, it seems, she can’t go five minutes without being reminded of how restrictive her new prison is. There’s no way out of it, no way to lean forward, to get in his way and force him to back down. She’s stuck in the bed and even if the IV didn’t plug her into the wall, she can barely sit up without trained nurses rearranging the alignment of her pillows. There’s no way she can stop him. 

“I’ll tell dad.” It’s a last ditch threat, desperate and hoarse. “He’ll stop you.”

Logan’s eyes meet hers head on and she can see that they both know different. 

“Hey!” Wallace’s voice breaks the tension. “How you feelin’?”

She plasters on a grin and shakes her head clear. 

“Just brilliant, Wallace, thanks for asking.”

He blusters through the room, simultaneously filling it and making it seem suddenly larger and wider and making it easier to breathe. 

“I brought you stuff, so you can cheer up this room. Upgrade from dearth dungeon to only mildly depressing prison.”

And even though they tease, back and forth, she finds the smile on her face becoming less manufactured and more real as, one by one, Wallace begins pulling a range of stuffed toys and flowers and little unicorn statues out of his carry bag, setting them up on the window ledge and a shelf on the far wall. 

“And…” He says it like he’s saved the best for last. “I brought you a brush.”

“Oh, thank god.” Logan groans good-naturedly. “I didn’t want to be the one to say it, but she was beginning to look a little Wookie-fied.”

Logan’s tongue pokes out at her when she turns her glare on him. 

She pouts and huffs and says rude things about the state of his deodorant, but she honestly doesn’t mind sitting still as Wallace leans in close and begins to drag the brush through her hair. The boys begin to debate the pros and cons of referring to her as a wookie or an ewok and she pretends to ignore them as she listens to the warm sound of laughter in their voices. 

Then she makes Wallace agree, on the promise of a slow, painful death, to bring in icecream and cookies as soon as she’s feeling better. 

***

He doesn’t know why he’s here. 

They walk into the cafeteria five feet to his left, hollow eyes and dark circles, weary in the way they talk slowly and quietly, as if they haven’t left her room yet. He can see the soft care they’re still taking, the slow, gentle movements, as if they don’t want to scare someone. Someone, as if even his own brain doesn’t want to admit the reason he’s here. 

He’s not really sure about anything, except for the fact that he’s most likely not welcome. He ducks his head back down to the small Styrofoam cup of acid tasting coffee on his table. 

Only, he’s Donald Lamb and he’s made it his life’s purpose squeezing his sorry self into places he’s not welcome. 

A hand lands heavy on his shoulder. 

“Hey.” He looks up and sees Keith looking down at him. “You should go see her.”

Across the room, two sets of eyes watch them. That Echolls kid and the other one whose name he can never remember. 

“Nah.” He shrugs and gestures to his table. “Just getting coffee. Had some other business here. You know the drill.”

There’s a heavy thump that Lamb realizes too late is Keith taking a deep breath and then launching himself into the chair opposite him. Silence as they both look at each other. He’s not going to be the first to break it. He was sitting here by himself minding his own business. 

“Look… Don…” And he knows what’s coming and no amount of wishing is going to change it, he only hopes Keith gets it over with as quickly as possible. “Uh... thanks.”

He knew it. He just hopes that the flinch didn’t reach his face, that it stayed hidden inside his own flesh. Yeah, thanks Don. Thanks a bunch for dragging your ass on information, again, that got Veronica into danger, again, when you could have saved everyone a whole lot of pain and yourself a whole bunch of extra paperwork, again. Where do you want the basket of mini muffins?

Any other day and he’d strip himself down and bask in all his naked glory in the beauty of the moment that is Keith Mars swallowing pride and thanking him for doing something, but this is the one thing that doesn’t quite get him there, because it’s nothing he did. 

“Yeah, ok.” It’s a half mumbled acceptance as he pushes his chair back and stands up, grabbing the half full cup. “Gotta go.”

“You should go see her.” Keith says to his back as he walks away. “She wants to see you.”

Goddamn stupid Keith, he thinks bitterly as he walks down the hallway, couldn’t leave well enough alone, could he? Had to go and say something like that. It wasn’t enough that he, Don Lamb, was at the hospital using his sheriff badge to surreptitiously take a quick peek at her files so that he didn’t have to ask anyone how she was, no. Of course not. 

There is one thing he’s not going to do, and if anyone thinks they’re going to push him into it then they’ve got another thing coming, he’s not going to feel guilty. Not over Veronica Mars. She is, and always will be, trouble. With a capital T. That’s not his fault. 

His knuckles rap against the door. 

There are times when maybe he could have been a better cop, but she usually just turns around and pays him back in kind. Their karma evens itself out wonderfully that way. Even if this time he winces when he imagines the amount of damage she’s going to have to do to smooth this one over. 

“Yeah?” It’s a strange voice that calls out. “We’re nearly done in here.”

Strange, but vaguely familiar, he’s heard it before. It’s not a doctor, he knows the woman, he’s seen her in the office several times and that gives him the confidence to push his way in. Obviously someone taking notes and statements and getting details about the case. 

“How’re you feeling Mars?” Two faces swivel to meet his and his brain shorts out as he remembers how he knows her. “Uh, hey Sarah. Didn’t mean to interrupt, I’ll just wait outside…”

“No, no.” It’s quick and efficient and hurried. “Just finished now. I’ll leave you two alone. Goodbye Veronica.”

He stares at the ceiling above the door, his back stretched awkwardly as he does it, as if he can push himself out of the room through sheer will while the woman snaps all her camera equipment back into place and hefts them all into a bag. 

“Yeah.” Comes the small little voice. “Nice to meet you.”

It’s almost painful and not at the same time, because her voice isn’t supposed to still be weak and hurt and vulnerable and that brings back memories of the night before, but still, he’s willing to bet that that’s not exactly a phrase Sarah hears on any workday. It gives the whole sentence just enough smartass to make him breathe easier. 

He frowns as he nods at Sarah and she blushes and nods back as she scurries out the door. 

Many people would probably call him an ass for not doing anything to change the fact that she’s both terrified and intimidated by him, but it’s not his fault she doesn’t have the balls to work it out for herself. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to breathe, let alone get jobs; they’re just that damnably stupid. 

“Well.” He says it to break the silence that descends, still facing the door. “You sound better at least.”

And, Jesus, why doesn’t he just dig his hands into his pockets and rock back and forth on the balls of his feet while he’s at it? If he doesn’t stop this nervous little boy act she’s going to get some asinine idea that he’s one of the fools around town turned googly eyed just for her. 

“Just dandy, thanks.” 

That, at least, sounds stronger. He hears her take a breath, shoring herself for battle, and tries not to hear the rustling of the sheet. 

“So, that was Sarah.” Stop it, Lamb, just stop it. “You two sound like you got along.”

She gives a snort and then rustles the damn sheet some more. 

“Yeah, well, when someone’s shoving a camera between your knees, it really takes care of the small talk. What happened to Mark?”

And that’s a very good question. He almost wishes he knows or cares. 

“He retired.” He shrugs at the wall. “Sarah’s the only one that answered the ad. Guess there’s not much call for crime scene photographers in Neptune.”

Rustle. Rustle. Snort. Tiny grunt of frustration. Rustle. 

“It should be a city pastime around here.” Rustle. Pause. “Dammit.”

He spins around, fingers curling and ready to snap her neck. 

“What the hell is wrong with you…?” And then stops, blinking in surprise. “Oh.”

She ducks her head and refuses to meet his eyes. 

“Yeah. Little help, here?”

And that has to hurt, he thinks. Veronica Mars having to ask him for help. With anything. He realizes with a start that this is one more thing he’s been waiting to gloat over for years and, now the opportunity is here, he’s not going to. 

Dammit. 

She’s half sitting, half leaning back in the bed with her arms held way out in front of her, pillows cushioning her neck, the top half of her torso completely covered by the brace and plaster. Unfortunately, the sheet covering the lower half and her bare legs is still drawn to the side and she doesn’t look able to bring it back up. 

“She get what she needed?”

That’s his great plan, keeping it professional and not actually giving into the little six-year-old voice in his head that begins to taunt _‘I see London, I see France…’_

“Yup.” Veronica lifts her chin, staying resolute through the bright flush of her face. “Brand spanking new tattoo and all.”

The very mention of it makes it a subject, makes it real and something to be addressed, not ignored. His eyes fly right to it, the angry red coloring of the pale skin surrounding the small green clover. 

“Bastards.” The vehemence in his voice makes her flinch and he immediately dials it down. “You can get it removed, you know.”

She can’t move from the neck down, but it doesn’t stop her giving a monumental eye roll. 

“Oh, really? Because I was thinking of keeping it.” Then she does something he’s just going to assume is supposed to be a shrug. “Apparently, the doctors thought it was more urgent to stop the chance of permanent paralysis and so the cosmetic surgery is going to have to wait a bit longer.”

It looks swollen and the red makes the skin seem overheated, his fingers brush the edges and he sighs in relief as she gives a little gasp. Her skin is cool and pliant, not at all overheated and resilient. 

“At least it’s not infected.”

“Yeah, good news, according to all the doctors. I guess we can thank Cormac for his great sterilization techniques… uh, hey, Deputy!”

The last bit is bitten out and he snaps back to attention, realizing suddenly exactly where his hand is and why she’s glaring at him again. He pulls the sheet back up her legs and tucks it around her waist in small, impersonal movements. 

“Sorry.” It’s not something he thinks about, that little jump back, the automatic step away. “So, uh… your dad said you wanted to see me?”

“Yeah.” And the way she blushes and turns away makes her look even more embarrassed than when her knickers were showing. “Right, I did. So, uh, I just wanted to say thanks. You know, for… um… thanks.”

“Just doing my job.”

He regrets it the very second it leaves his lips. And he can see it; he can damn well see the words she bites back. It frustrates him, because all he wants right now is to go back to her being a bitch and him being an ass and everyone knowing what’s happening and what their roles are. 

Her hands jostle at the end of the plaster and she reminds him of an absurd scarecrow. 

“I take it this is what the tail was for?”

Trust Veronica to push the screws in a little further. He gives a small nod as his answer. 

“So.” She’s biting her top lip as she looks carefully at his face. “You don’t look horribly disfigured. I take it you haven’t gone out there, yet?”

If it wouldn’t be too cartoonish, he’d whistle his innocence, instead he scans the walls and the shelves with their insipidly cute and teenaged toys that remind him just how young she really is, the bedside table with a glass and a really long straw.

And a colorful array of magic markers. 

“Gone where?”

She huffs. 

“Please.” And then she flexes her fingers inside the plaster so she can pretend to check out her fingernails in a show of boredom. “I may be drugged up, but I haven’t had a lobotomy just yet.”

It’s a quick snap of his fingers. 

“Damn, I’m fairly sure I made it clear that was a must.”

“Sorry, Deputy.” And she gives him that cocky grin that levels the playing field a bit more. “Guess you’ll just have to put up with me a bit longer.”

He grins as he casually picks up a green marker, twirling it in his hands and turning to face her head on. There are already three patches of color on her cast. He doesn’t even need to read the shaky signatures to figure out which ones came from which person. 

Keith and Echolls and the goofy one that isn’t rich enough or trouble enough for him to take notice. 

She sees the marker in his hand and sighs. 

“Be nice.”

It’s a warning that makes him grin. 

Nastily. 

“Now, what makes you think I won’t?”

The perfect place to write is the outside of her wrist, slightly underneath, where no amount of stretching will give her a good view of it, a place viewable to everyone who walks through the door. He can’t keep the chuckle from escaping. 

“Oh, I don’t know.” She kinks her neck out, stretching as far as she can trying to see what he’s writing. “Because I’ve met you?”

He caps the marker with relish, admiring his handiwork. 

“Just for that, I’m not telling you what it says.”

It won’t be long before someone tells her, or she’s finally able to get out of the bed and find a mirror, but he’ll take whatever torment he can get in the meantime. 

“Just so you know?” She looks him straight in the eye when she says it. “I can’t stand you. Nothing has changed. Just remember that when I say: be careful when you go out there.”

He nods and doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know what she’s talking about this time. He also doesn’t tell her he’s just spent the day with the same low lives that did this to her. Nothing too special, but he had to keep up appearances and it would raise too many suspicions if he didn’t haul in the crime lords for questioning. 

Just like he thought: they lawyered up, produced airtight alibis, and were nothing but concerned for the poor ex-sheriff’s daughter. 

The smarmy bastards. 

“Feeling’s mutual, kid.”

“Oh, and heads up.” Figures she’d know the one thing to stop him actually walking out the door. “Logan’s looking for his own payback, too. Maybe you can stop him doing something completely stupid?”

Interesting news. He mock salutes as he looks at her for the last time. 

“Will do.”

He’s not looking up when he exits, just pushes out of the door and starts towards the relief of his car, his home and what is hopefully an hour of bad television reruns and refrigerated leftover pizza before the meetup time with Weevil and whatever gang members he manages to round up. 

Someone bumps into him, jerking him completely out of his reverie, and he looks up to see dark, angry eyes surveying him. 

“Echolls.” It’s a sneer. “Watch where you’re going, huh?”

He hates this kid, has always hated him, even before knowing him. It honestly started out as nothing this particular kid did, it was just there thanks to a fault of birth, the very fact that he was a smartass rich kid, from smartass rich parents, the sort of kid that believed he owned the world and usually did. 

Then, of course, he’d had the distinct pleasure of meeting him and the general dislike became seething hatred. Nothing that Echolls has done in the years since has even slightly redeemed him in Lamb’s eyes. Not one goddamn thing. 

“I heard that.” Smug little gesture towards the room, like Lamb could be intimidated by some smarmy spoiled brat. “You really going out for the hunt?”

And that’s when he sees it, something deeper than the usual over privileged glaze. Lamb sees hunger. 

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

The hallway is practically empty; even so, he makes sure to keep his words vague. 

“Right.” Logan nods. “I’m in. I want in.”

It’s not a question and it only makes Lamb hate him more. He’s probably never asked for one goddamn thing in his life. Say it; make it happen. That must be nice. A fraction of a second before Lamb can tell him exactly where to shove his silver spoon, another face and another voice pops up. 

“Me, too.”

Lamb frowns. 

“What? How old are you, kid, twelve?” He looks the boy up and down. “What are you gonna do? Throw your juice box at them?”

Logan chuckles and Lamb realizes exactly how far he’s lost control of this situation. 

“This isn’t playgroup, kids.” It’s supposed to be an insult, spoken with just the right amount of disdain, and he’s gratified to see them both bristle. “This isn’t someone pulling hair and running away, do you get that? These are dangerous people and they do dangerous things. Stay out of it.”

Logan crosses his arms over his chest and, a second later, so does the other kid. 

“We’re in.” 

“Go back to the playpen.” He dismisses them with barely a flick of the wrist, waving them off as he strides down the hall. “I’ve got things to do.”

***

“I can bring your music in.”

Veronica sighs. 

Her dad’s trying to help, she knows he is and, to be honest, the thought of familiar tunes to break the monotony of staring at the wall isn’t entirely unwelcome. But, for the moment, she just can’t get past the image of herself sitting there with one of the buds dropping from her ears, the line of it snaking down and into her collared neck, nothing but annoyance and yet another reason for her to ask someone else for help. 

As if it isn’t embarrassing enough having to wait for a nurse to come by so she can ask to have her teeth brushed. 

“Maybe a whole player?” She suggests, trying to keep the bitter out of her tone for his sake. “With big buttons.”

“Buttons?” It’s a frown of confusion. 

“And a stick.” She supplies pointedly as her chin juts forward to illustrate. “So I can hold it between my teeth and sort of mash at the controls, you know?”

It’s his turn to sigh. 

“Veronica…” 

But he doesn’t get very far. 

“Maybe I can hold a paintbrush between my teeth to make art… I can sell it to pay for Hearst!”

She can see it building up in his eyes, in the color bleeding up his neck, the tension in his face. And she’s not at all surprised when he snaps, slapping his hand down on her mattress. The cushion absorbs the majority of it, but it’s like she can feel the aftershocks of it run all through her limbs. 

“Stop it, Veronica.” No matter how soft and hushed, there’s no denying the panic that’s still drying in his voice. “This isn’t a joke.”

A hysterical little bubble bursts inside her throat, not even making it to the surface, spurting acid hot bile up into the back of her mouth and she chokes on it. 

“Oh, right.” The hysteria continues to gush up and he immediately looks contrite, but it’s too late to stop once she’s begun. “Thanks for that reminder, dad, because I almost forgot. You know, I was wondering where the clowns were.”

“Hey.” It’s a rumble out of his throat, soft and soothing and gentle as he shifts forward in his chair. “C’mon, it’s alright now.”

There are other words, the familiar rumble of him hushing at her as she feels him lean forward. He’s sitting close to her bed, so close she can feel the press of his knees in the bulge of the thin mattress, the rustle of air as he moves, the heat of his hand coming up to her face again. 

She can’t process what he’s saying, just the meaning behind it as she feels him brushing her tears away again and she hates it. Hates that she’s crying and hates that he’s seeing it, hates that she can’t wipe her own anger and fear and day old terror away. 

Her head jerks away from him, sudden and unmistakable, and she ignores the hurt in his face as she tries to snuffle all the tears back, large messy gulps of it. He sits back in the chair and pretends not to notice the dismissal. 

“Knock, knock!”

The voice is too cheery and too loud, intrusive, and they both share a sigh of relief. The door has already been clicked open, held ajar and everyone’s been doing that all day. She wonders why they bother knocking at all, there’s little to no privacy in here. A deep breath calms her or, at least, gives her enough bearing to fake calm, and then she nods at her father. 

He gives a weak smile, producing a wet cloth from the side basin and swiping it over her face, making her feel all of three years old before he opens the door fully, giving a quick nod. 

“Eli.”

“Sheriff.”

There’s a brief moment where she watches them, detached and curious, as they size each other up. They’ve never had the easiest relationship and it’s not getting any easier as Keith continues to look both disturbed and puzzled. And she knows that he’s really only concerned for her, because in his experience, boys he used to pick up when they were twelve still get picked up after they turn eighteen and he just hasn’t seen the sides of Weevil she has. 

Then it clicks; her dad is puzzled. 

“Dad?” The cheer in her voice mirrors the false one Weevil had entered with and she sees the confusion in his face. “Can you get me some water? And a blanket?”

“Yes, dear.” The look he shoots her as he reaches across to get the little plastic cup, still two thirds full, tells her that he’s not at all fooled. “I guess all the blankets in the cupboard just don’t meet your high standard.”

She grins at him, sunny and bright. 

“Thanks dad.”

He leaves and then there’s nothing left for Weevil to focus on but her. 

It starts with the once over, scanning her from head to foot and back again, then the quick flicker around her cast, topped off with a blushing avoidance of her eyes. Relief warring with anger warring with sympathetic pain warring with pity. He’s going to do one of two things, she knows it because everyone has done one or the other all day when they enter her room, he’s either going to go for the personal cupping of her cheek, or the less affectionate patting of her knee. She’s willing to bet knee, her current score on the ‘visitor face/knee bingo’ card is 6-2. 

Before today she’d had no real grasp on exactly how important hands were for interpersonal communication. 

She gives him a smile, because that’s what he’s looking for, some small sign to say that she’s really okay under all the machinery and plaster and bruises. 

“Well… shit, V.”

“Yeah.” She rolls her eyes, but she’s not angry. She actually kinda likes the easy way he’s treating her. It’s almost refreshing. “It’s a real bummer. So, who called you?”

He shakes his head and ducks it at the same time. 

“What?”

“Don’t play innocent with me, Weevs.” And maybe it’s a little unfair to tilt her head in this predicament, but she makes sure there’s a knowing gleam in her eyes and she can see the answering amusement in his. “Dad didn’t call you in here. I really doubt Logan would have stopped in his big panic slash hate campaign to dial you up. And Wallace doesn’t even have your number.”

His hand slides up to curl around the back of his neck and maybe he likes to think he’s a great poker player, but she can read his tells like a dirty book. 

“Shit. It was Lamb, wasn’t it?”

“What?” But the widening of his eyes makes him a liar before he even denies it. “No. Why the hell…?”

“Jesus, Weevil. Not you, too.” And this time there is no amusement in her eyes, just warning. “What is he getting you into?”

He steps forward, hand out. 

“Nothin’ V, don’t you worry.”

And, damn straight, her score jumps to 7-2. Knee it is. 

“Oh, no.” She drawls out, heavy on the sarcasm. “Nothing to worry about here. Do you see me at all? Do you see what they’ve done? They’re not just gonna stop, don’t you get that?”

That slightly hysterical edge is returning to her voice, it’s higher and more scratched than she’d like and she tries to tone it down, tries to reel it in, but she just can’t seem to forget the feel of being trapped, being helpless, and all that pain. 

“If you go after them now, they’re just gonna come after you. It’s going to turn into some endless back and forth battle, this vicious little war until everyone I know is gone!”

And the little crystal gleam in his eye, cold and cruel and angry, that hardens as he watches her is exactly why she didn’t want to lose it in front of him. She’s not stupid when it comes to him, he’s a big tough biker and he used to run a gang and he’s done time, but underneath all of that he’s protective and possessive of everything he cares about and, for whatever reason, she knows she’s part of that. 

“Don’t you worry, V.” He promises her. “They ain’t gonna get nothing that’s not already coming to ‘em.”

They stare at each other for a second, silent and stubborn. 

“Don’t.” It’s said with a sigh, she’s past pleading at this point and she doesn’t believe she’ll have any success either way. “Please, Weevil, just don’t.”

He smiles, ducking his head like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. 

“Can’t help it, you know, leopard, spots and all.” 

Then his lips stretch even further, a grin breaking out on his face as he chuckles to himself. Veronica’s jaw tightens and she clenches her teeth together. She knows what he’s looking at, knows what just caught his eye. 

“What?” She’s not even joking anymore, because this isn’t funny. “What, tell me what it says!”

He continues to chuckle, shaking his head with laughter rosy cheeks as he backs away. 

“You take care, V.”

On top of the awkward body language, everybody walking through that door after Lamb left, from her father, Logan and Wallace, down to the doctor, two nurses and the lady that brought her dinner, has taken one look at the inscription on her arm and laughed. And they all refuse to tell her what it says. 

That’s it, Lamb has to die, and slowly. 

***

He whistles as he walks into the diner, his eyes sweeping the establishment quickly. 

There’s a family sitting in a booth to the left, drab mother, harried father and three squabbling kids more suited for a condom commercial than any STD known to man, a couple in the corner sharing a bowl of fries above the table and a hand job under it, and an emaciated waitress with thin, greasy hair and thick, rubbery lips. 

Neptune’s finest, for sure. 

“So.” He coughs a little as he stands at the edge of a table to the right. “Food here any good?”

Lambs rocks on the balls of his feet, thumbs hooked into his belt loops as he towers over the kid, it’s instinct and habit and he’s not really looking to break himself out of it.

“Nothin’ but the best.”

The smirking face in front of him doesn’t even betray a flicker of intimidation and it makes his fingertips twitch with irritation, but all he does is sigh as he slips into the booth opposite. 

“Better than you get at home, hey Navarro?”

“Whatever.” And then the kid hands him a plastic covered, sticky menu, keeping his own face obscured. As if there were more reason to be embarrassed being seen with the Sheriff than the disgraced former leader of a motorcycle gang. “We really doing this? Or are we gonna sit here and debate the specials?”

His eyes flicker over the bland choices that the diner offers and his stomach turns at the very thought of any of them. The waitress behind the counter chews a wad of gum and twirls her finger in a lanky string of hair next to her face, her eyes glazed over with boredom. She looks as if a stiff wind will break her in half, there are so many bones poking through what’s supposed to be a uniform. 

The menu is placed back on the table. It’s a firm policy he has: if the employees don’t eat the food, then neither does he. 

“There’s been a little hitch.” He can’t quite keep the amusement out of his voice. “We have to wait for Heckle and Jeckle.”

Eli looks at him, confused, but Lamb merely points to the car park of the gas station across the street. Sure enough, two figures get out of a car and peer back at them. To the naked eye, it looks as if they’re even trying to be subtle about it. He’d give them points for effort if he hadn’t picked them five minutes after leaving the office. 

He spent a great deal of time holed up at the station all day, growling at random people and making himself generally unapproachable. The last thing he’d wanted to do was paperwork, but he was still the Sheriff and the rest of the criminals in town didn’t much care if he was ready to shirk his uniform for one night. At least, the majority of them didn’t, he knew three who would. 

There were too many loose ends he’d tied up beforehand to let the rest of the plan go unhinged by ignoring the two fools that thought sitting in a car with a camera all night once or twice made them expert private detectives. If he didn’t rein them in, they were going to get themselves killed. Or someone else. Lamb has the briefest thought that if Veronica knew how obvious they’d been, she’d kill them herself. 

“What are they doing here?”

Navarro sounds understandably pissed. 

“I didn’t bring them.” Lamb unfolds a couple of bills from his back pocket and tosses them on the table. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t order anything, he wouldn’t touch it if he did, but the kid’s been nursing a cup of something and the skeleton serving coffee gives them a dark look when they get up to leave. Tips from the rest of her clients, spectacular specimens of the human race though they are, probably amount to another stick of gum and some lint. Hell, maybe she can buy herself a sandwich or two. 

They cross the road quickly, barely giving enough time for Echolls and his sidekick to scramble back into the car. 

“The fuck you two think you’re doing?” He stands by the driver’s window, glaring down at the short kid, tapping obnoxiously on the glass. “Didn’t I tell you to stay at home?”

“Weevil?” Echolls pipes up and Lamb is all sorts of pleased to note he’s wounded the poor boy’s ego, even if he’s ten times more pissed that the kid still thinks he’s automatically included. “You’re letting Weevil in?”

Navarro preens. 

“You got a problem, white boy?”

Great. This was becoming a bad version of West Side Story. 

“I don’t have time for this shit.” Lamb raises his hands in mock defeat and steps back. “Why don’t all three of you stay here and play who has the biggest balls? Or any at all? Will that get you out of my hair? Jesus, I’m leaving you all here. Okay? You got that? Stay in the fucking car.”

Three pairs of eyes turn to steel in front of him. It’s almost comical. If he had any say in it, the foley guys would add animal growling to this particular scene in his life. He wouldn’t be surprised if one of them actually growled. It’s also not surprising that his order makes Echolls actually open the damn door and step out. 

One thing was for sure, he didn’t have time to coax and coddle these boys into something useful. He needed them to straighten up and focus instantly. He could take his sweet time coaching them, or he could use the oldest trick in the book. 

“We’re in.” Echolls insists. 

“Damn straight.” The other kid crosses his arms and gets out of the car. 

“I saw her and those micks aren’t getting away with it this time.” 

Navarro cracks his knuckles and if Lamb was seven years old he might even be threatened by it. Instead, he brings his hand up and pinches the bridge of his nose. There’s a headache forming right between his eyes. He sighs and lifts his eyes once again to look at the three of them. They’re like faithful little dogs, sitting in a row with their tails wagging, drooling at the sound of Pavlov ringing a bell. 

Well, maybe if he switched ‘Pavlov’ for ‘Veronica’ and ‘bell’ for whatever the hell she did. 

“This is just because she’s cute, right?” Truthfully, he’s always wondered. “What? She must put out like nobody’s…”

“Whoa!” Navarro grabs Echolls as the kid practically leaps over the front bonnet. “Drop it. It ain’t worth it, man. Not yet.”

“Tone it down, okay?” It’s a glare, a little spark of life from the kid… Winston? And here Lamb thought he was near mute. “That’s not necessary.” 

He grins, because this is just fun. It’s a tingle that starts at the base of his spine and works its way up. 

“Seriously, does she come in chocolate or what?”

Echolls squirms, red and purple, struggling in Navarro’s arms. 

“I will fucking kill you!” It’s a scream and Lamb fully believes the kid means it. “Do you hear me? Don’t you dare…!”

This is his cue; this is what he wanted, so he steps forward, deliberately putting his face right up into Echolls’ space. He trusts Navarro to the grip steady, to keep the kid from doing anything that might end this before it’s all begun. 

“Great.” He says it with a smug little crackle of his gum as he flicks the kid in the middle of his chest. “Now, maybe, I can use you. Aim the anger over there, ‘kay?”

Lamb points to a non-descript bar down the road. The neon sign blinks half heartedly, proclaiming it to be the N-E-P-T-U--E A-R--S. The sign looks as bored as any of the patrons that happen to stumble in and out of the door. It’s desolate and forgotten and not worth looking at, except for the three patrons drinking their celebrations inside. 

“Now I get it.” The smaller kid shakes his head in disgust. “Now I know why she hates you so much.”

“And I’m crying about it, Wendell, I really am.” He straightens up his collar and walks past them without waiting to see if they’ll follow. “You got no idea.”

***

“Hi, Sweetie, how are you doing?”

Veronica bites down on the urge to roll her eyes at the overly sweet question from the too cheery nurse that has just entered her room. She shares a look of amusement with her dad, sitting quietly in the armchair with a book and a mug of coffee, before taking a deep breath and trying to smile. 

“Just great, thanks.”

Her right leg jostles under the covers; she can’t help it. It’s like she’s having some kind of seizure, her muscles contracting and releasing in spasm, toes tapping, the movement ricocheting up and down the whole bed. She supposes that, at least, some part of her is moving. 

It’s not like the rest of her can. 

The rest of her is stuck sitting in this damn bed, in this damn hospital, unable to leave or even move a fraction of an inch. She’s stuck here, knowing that other people are out there getting themselves hurt or injured or worse, all on account of her. Well, no, not exactly. It’s not her fault, she’s willing to admit that even before the scheduled session with the trauma shrink the next day, but she knows they’re out there in her name. 

Well, at least, Wallace, Logan and Weevil are. Hell knows why Lamb is there. 

It’s frustration beyond her endurance. 

“I just came in to give you a little something to help you sleep.” Five seconds ago, Veronica was calling this woman’s expression too cheery and upbeat, now the only word she can think to describe it is suspicious. Maybe sneaky and underhanded. “It’s nothing to worry about, just something to help you relax after your situation.”

Situation, Veronica thinks, yeah, that’s one of the more tactful words for horrific abduction and torture. 

“Uh, no thanks.” She smiles widely. “I’m good, really.”

The nurse shrugs helplessly as she lifts the IV tube and finds the junction, swabbing and then piercing it with the syringe she pulls out of one of the multitude of pockets in her uniform. 

“Doctors orders, I’m sorry.”

“No, hey!” Veronica tries to sit up and achieves nothing but a futile shift inside her plaster. “I said…”

She feels a hand, warm and large, on her ankle.

“Veronica.” Her dad’s voice is gentle and soothing. “Just relax, okay? You’ll be fine. I promise.”

She can feel it already, a thick shifting inside her veins. 

“But…” Her eyes begin to droop. “I don’t… want…”

The room begins to blur and she can hear the slur of her voice. Everything slows down and she tries to fight it. She tries hard. 

“There, now. See? Your father knows what he’s talking about.” The nurse pats the hard coating of her arm, trying to give comfort in her betraying, underhanded way. “Ooh, hey, what’s this? Oh, heh. That’s funny.”

Veronica blinks, peering awkwardly at the nurse who’s leaning down to read the end of her arm. That stupid, insipid little inscription… damn plaster… can’t read… Lamb… die. 

“Veronica? I’m sorry, I don’t… Did my daughter just growl?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, it’s just the medication. She’ll probably be out of it for a good eight hours at least.”

***

The first one is easy. 

Danny Boyd is not one of the sharpest minds of the bunch. Lamb’s fairly sure if it wasn’t for the luck of marriage and the unsavory in-laws the man inherited with it, he would have been well and truly locked up in San Quentin by now. He’s just not smart enough to stay out of the system by himself. 

There’s a bathroom towards the back. Conveniently located near an exit.

When he sees Danny separate himself from the herd, walking slightly stiffly as he makes a crude joke over his shoulder, Lamb pushes the little kid out to be the lure. He’s the only one they don’t know. 

“Hey man.” The voice travels around the corner, skipping only once with nerves. “You know who owns that Baracuda out there? Some spicks on bikes just started thrashin’ on it!”

Works like a charm. Danny comes running past, headed full steam toward the exit. Lamb sticks his arm out and clotheslines him in the neck. He hopes to hell it hurts and, with any luck, it’ll be the start of many bruises. As the guy stumbles, Navarro pulls him aside, arm circling Danny’s neck tightly, cutting off circulation, while two other of Navarro’s goons grab his arms and man handle him outside. 

One down. 

They wait, twenty minutes or so. Never let it be said that the Fitzpatrick’s don’t care for their very own. 

Liam comes wandering down the hall. 

He’s stronger and more wary; he’s had more experience with being a hated member of society, a token of power for several gang members to overthrow just for the status. He’d have to be a complete idiot not to suspect something the night after they took down a girl like that. 

Lamb stays in the shadows and watches him open the bathroom door carefully, calling his brother in law’s name, he breathes shallowly and quietly as Liam slips inside. Then he counts to ten, hearing only mild thumps and struggles. When he’s fairly sure the field is even, he enters. 

Two of Navarro’s guys are kicking him on the floor, but Liam’s fighting back and he’s fighting back dirty. 

Lamb pulls out a taser. 

Two down. 

If there were going to be a problem, Cormac would be it. He’s cagier, more experienced, and there’s just no way to fool him. One missing family member, especially when it’s Danny, can be overlooked. Two can’t. He’s already draining the last of whatever was in his glass, tucking whatever belongings are on the table into his pockets, his eyes searching the bar for any clue. 

Lamb watches with disinterest. 

It’s an agonizing thirty second wait as he holds his breath, waiting as long as he possibly can before stepping inside the main room, drenching himself in bad lighting, clouds of smoke, and the faint echo of snooker balls. Cormac’s eyes immediately find him and Lamb gives him a cheery salute. 

Cormac reaches for something at his hip and his hand fumbles, comes up empty, and then he stumbles a little, his right knee giving out as he reaches for the back of the chair, grasping at something to hold him upright. 

“Poor man.” Lamb nods at the bartender. “Can’t hold his liquor, I guess.”

Willy nods back and gives a nervous smile, content at least to keep hold of his liquor license for another year. 

Cormac groans, stumbling even further, and Lamb manages to get his foot in the way. Accidentally, of course. The larger man practically falls over and then there are two more pairs of arms lifting him up, helping him towards the door. 

“Guess I’ll have to take him home.” Lamb sighs, heavily put upon. “Let him sleep it off.”

The night air is fresh when he exits the bar. He takes a deep breath and lets it fill his lungs. It’s dark outside and there’s a form of symmetry in that as he watches Cormac being trundled into the white, non descript van.

So far, so good. 

***

She tries to scream.

Her shoulders burn like acid and tears pool in the corners of her eyes, messy tracks of salt and snot flow down her face and sweat trickles underneath her armpits. She can feel his hot, fetid breath back on her neck as the sound of metal taunts her from above. He’s there, everywhere, all at once, the feel of him crawling all over her skin like swarms of insects. 

“They said you were a fiery one, Veronica Mars.”

She saw an old black and white movie once where giant swarms of killer ants ate a whole island within seconds. 

“And you? You’re just a little doll, aren’t you?”

His hands feel like that. Like they’re going to burn the top layers of her skin away and leave her raw and bleeding.

She tries to scream, but she can’t, it sticks in the back of her throat, behind her tonsils, choking her, making her feel like she’s going to swallow her tongue. 

“I’ve got one last message for your daddy.” His lips hiss the words right into her ear. “Think you can give it to him?”

This time there is no buzzing of a tattoo needle and his hands don’t stop on her thigh. 

She tries to scream, tries to scream so hard she can feel the layers of her throat flaying, shreds of skin and blood spraying the world in front of her. 

“Veronica! Veronica, wake up!” His voice switches to concerned in an instant. “What the hell did you give her?”

“It’s a basic sedative. Diazepam. She should be sleeping, not screaming.”

Cormac blurs into her dad and Liam the nurse. 

“You gave her valium?”

***

Isolate. Interrogate. Intimidate. 

It’s a finely tuned plan. 

The three I’s of successfully interviewing a perp, Lamb thinks with relish. It’s almost amusing, definitely poetic on a grand scale, that he’s using Keith’s training methods to break these guys. Of course, he doesn’t quite remember the violence and the blood as part of his tenure under Keith Mars, but a man has to improvise sometimes. 

_Isolate_.

“Everything alright in here?”

He pokes his head around the door and Eli Navarro looks up with a satisfied grin on his face as he and a few of his friends stand over Danny Boyd. The man looks bruised and battered, not terribly and unforgivably so, but enough to make a point.

“Just fine, Sheriff.”

“Good, good.”

It’s a small walk down the hallway to the next room. The warehouse is large, and the storage rooms are spaced a good distance away from each other, but it’s also abandoned and empty and the echoes throughout the building make it seem smaller than it actually is. 

“How ‘bout you guys?” He says it almost cheerfully. “You doin’ alright?”

“Just peachy!” Echolls threads his fingers together, inverting them and popping the knuckles gleefully. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

Sitting on a chair, hands tied behind his back, legs and torso strapped down, Liam’s eyes look angry. 

“Just remember…” He winks good-naturedly. “Make it last. You don’t want to peak too early.”

Echolls gives him a smartass salute and Lamb can see the anger that still burns underneath. 

“Sir, yes sir!”

“Hey.” He grips the doorjamb and leans further in, sweeping his eyes around the room. “Where’s Waldo?”

“I’m here.” Comes the terse voice behind him. “And my name is Wallace. I was just getting supplies.”

The kid gives him a wounded glare as he hefts the bundle he’s carrying into the room. Lamb doesn’t even want to know what’s in there. It’s best for everyone if he just moves on. 

Of course, moving on means the last door in the hall. That’s all his. He can taste it, salty anticipation on his tongue, and it gets stronger with every step he takes. He wants it to last hours for the others, because the strongest part of breaking Danny and Liam is listening to him breaking Cormac. 

_Interrogate_.

Lamb sucks on the flesh of his bottom lip as he walks forward, studying the scene in front of him. He idly swirls a plastic cup of water in his hand, feeling the currents tip and eddy within his palm. It’s almost soothing. His right foot lands softly in the dust, followed by the steady fall of the left. 

Cormac hangs by one wrist, limp and strangely bent. 

His right arm stretches all the way up, fingers curled uselessly against the cuff, while his left arm dangles all the way down, swinging idly in the non existent breeze around his torso. The awkward stretch of it curves the man’s spine, shifts the whole alignment of his body out of synch. 

There’s dust all around and it coats everything, all the way up inside Lamb’s nostrils. It smells like mold and plaster and stale water. Great streaks of sweat cake the dust into patches of greasy slime along Cormac’s misshapen form. If he had to take a guess, Lamb would say there were at least two broken ribs and an eye that won’t open under the swelling for at least a week. 

“Hey.” He dips his fingers in the water and splashes a few drops of it on Cormac’s face. The man twitches, but doesn’t raise his head. “Hey, sleeping beauty? No passing out, okay?”

Nothing. 

Lamb sighs and upends the whole cup into Cormac’s face, watching as the man jerks awake, spluttering and confused. It doesn’t take long, mere seconds, until the confusion becomes anger. He steps back to let Cormac twist in circles, pulling at the chain holding him up, cording and straining the muscles that years of weight training have given him. 

“You fucker, I’m gonna…”

“Well, hello again, Mr. Fitzpatrick.” It’s bright and cheerfully official. “I thought we could resume our little talk from before?”

A face turns to him with an angry snarl, whole body pivoting in a large circle. 

“You again?”

“Yes, me!” Lamb’s whole demeanor is bright, but there’s a slow slick slide of his hand to his back pocket and a sordid little snick that disrupts the air between breaths. “So, where were we? Oh, that’s right. You were about to admit to kidnapping and brutally torturing an eighteen year old girl. Okay, get on with it.”

His left hand poses in front of his face, as if he’s checking his fingernails for scuff marks. Or dirt. Wouldn’t want dirt to hide under there, all sorts of nasty grime and germs to be found that way. The tip of the blade in his right hand is perfect for reaching the most difficult corners. 

Cormac’s one good eye narrows, but at least he’s still. 

“She’s eighteen?” It’s a vile, bitter gasp that grates out through Cormac’s clenched jaw. “Damn, I coulda had some fun with that one. They’re better young, you know. Fresher. Pity I didn’t get out sooner, huh?”

The words twist something inside him, but Lamb isn’t going to fall for that. Not this soon. Not this early. He’s interrogated many perps in his time and this guy is mean, but by no means the worst. Twelve years in San Q, the guy has to know how these things are done. He’s trying to get Lamb to peak too soon. 

The quicker it is for Cormac, the easier it’ll be for his brothers. 

So Lamb just yawns instead. 

“So it was you?”

A dry, scratched sound emerges and it’s almost as if Cormac is trying to laugh, dangling from the air like an incredibly twisted piñata. 

“Fuck no.” And Cormac spits into the dust. “If it was me, you’da known. I would’ve torn her up so bad…”

Lamb’s never understood the appeal of a piñata. It’s a lot of work, being blindfolded and striking out with a bat, hoping in vain to hit something, anything, with the right angle no less, with the ultimate goal of splitting the thing’s belly right open, candy entrails spilling on the floor. 

The tip of the blade catches on the threads of Cormac’s shirt, just above the nipple, and stops the words before they’re spoken. 

“Yeah.” Lamb says, pressing even further. “Because little girls tear so easily, don’t they, Cor? Guess what? That’s not a secret. They’ve been tearing for centuries. Not even Jack the goddamn Ripper was original in his work. You wanna know something else?”

“Sure.” Cormac grins against the tiniest drop of blood playing again his shirt. His eyes stare right into Lamb’s as he pulls his shoulder and manages to press further, pushing the blade, daring Lamb to drop it or stick it all the way in. “Exactly how small is your dick?”

And for every lesson learned, there is also an opposite. Just as slow can be made mercifully quick with the same results, so too can brief be made agonizingly slow. Cormac bites his bottom lip as Lamb twists the blade, screwing the tip of it into the growing scarlet patch. 

Neither man backs down. 

“Because it takes a really big man to string up a poor, defenseless girl, doesn’t it?” There’s so much salt oozing onto the back of his teeth Lamb has to swallow. “Or is that the problem? Is that what you were doing? Compensating, huh?”

“Compensating?” Cormac rattles the manacle holding his wrist above his head. “Guess you know about that, don’t ye? What kind of man needs to chain up another man just to beat him up?”

Lamb brings his hand up to cup his chin in thought, a bright glob of gore dripping down and missing his foot by less than an inch. 

“Is that your problem?” He says it casually, but the blood begins to pump hard and fast and thick. He can smell it in the air. “You think this is unfair? I mean, it’s not like you gave Veronica much in the way of a chance is it? But I’m obviously the bigger man here, aren’t I?”

Even as he speaks, Lamb is moving forward, sliding his keys out of his pocket. He can see Cormac watching him with beaded, untrusting eyes. It’s a foolish move, one saved specifically for morons, and if he’d seen anyone else doing it he would have bitched them inside and out for the sheer stupidity. 

But he’s really feeling energetic and he’s never had the taste for slaughtering, poor defenseless piñatas. 

“The rules are…” The cuff slips off and Cormac’s body slumps instantly. “… there are no rules.”

Lamb immediately jumps back, just as Cormac straightens, and he clicks the blade shut, sliding it back into his pocket as he takes a breath and steadies himself. There’s a brief second as their eyes meet and then Cormac springs forward with a roar, arms raised and face angry. He’s prepared, he’s ready, and he’s waiting for the godawful thud of a large shoulder hitting him in the abdomen and arms pinioning him backwards. 

The breath is knocked completely out of him, loud and large and puffed right out of his chest, but this is what he wants, really. His own arms come down, fists clenched together, and land heavy in the middle of Cormac’s spine. The action makes the man jerk and Lamb uses his whole body, hips and back and knees, to thrust the other man off balance, catching him and turning them both. 

Cormac’s shoulder hits the wall and a grunt rips the air. 

A fist grabs hold of Lamb’s hair and suddenly his face is slammed against the wall, face grinding into the plaster as he reaches up, scrambling for purchase, trying to grab hold. He can taste blood as his fingers close around an ear lobe and pull back, sharp and hard, with enough force to tear flesh. 

A sharp hiss slides through Cormac’s teeth. 

“Were you there?”

“Screw you.”

The next time Lamb yanks on the lobe, fingers slippery with blood, Cormac lets out a yell, gritty with rage and pain, but it’s too brief and too controlled to be any use. 

“Cormac Fitzpatrick?” So Lamb scrambles his hand up the side of Cormac’s head, twisting his fingers into the hair. “Were you involved in the assault of Veronica Mars?”

Broken laughter echoes in his ears. 

“Wish I was, Sheriff, she woulda been worth it from what I hear.”

He puts all his energy into slamming Cormac’s head against the wall, making the rest of his body slack so he can slip out from the man’s grasp. It’s a flash as he finds his feet, twisting to stand above Cormac, and using this newfound leverage to slam him against the wall again. 

“Just say it out loud, Cormac. Were. You. There?”

It’s constant moving and grappling, hands swarming for a grip, nails gouging into skin around necks and faces and eyes, feet flying, anything for the upper hand. If it weren’t for the blood flying between them, it would almost be intimate. Cormac’s arm closes around Lamb’s neck and air suddenly becomes an issue. 

“You ever hear a woman in pain? Sheriff Lamb?” Cormac pants it out, voice thick with effort. “Sounds she makes, it’s like sex.”

He folds his arm up around his torso, bring his hand up to meet the front of Cormac’s ribs, and his fingers find the wet patch easily, poking hard into the hole made earlier. His nail catches on the edges of skin, tearing the wound further. The arms around his neck ease off as Cormac screams. 

“Guess you’re not doin’ it right, hey Donny boy?” Cormac steps back, hand clasping at the blood now pouring down his chest. “What’s giving you the most trouble, then, the pain or the sex?”

Lamb swallows hard, thick blood sliding down his throat. 

“The part where some incompetent fuck let you out of prison.”

It makes Cormac chuckle as they stare, feet slowly shuffling to the right, one in front of the other, eyes forward, like animals circling their prey. 

“Would that be the same incompetent fuck who signed the papers allowing you to be Sheriff?”

There’s a countdown, some unseen, unheard, invisible scoreboard counting down and giving off a signal, a starter pistol that sends them both lunging at each other. Lamb’s shoulder hits its target; the soft underbelly of Cormac’s abdomen, and a quick shift hefts it up into the crackling of a tender rib. 

They bounce off the floor, hips and knees and skulls.

“Answer… the… fucking… question…”

He punctuates his words with fists to whatever pieces of flesh he can find and a heavy thudding sound precedes a sharp cracking in his ribs. A flood of panic shoots through him with white-hot pain. 

“I bet she comes like she cries.” Cormac hisses triumphantly as Lamb writhes on the ground. “All in the eyes.”

The flashes he gets are not coherent, they’re not meant to make sense. It’s a red tinged slideshow hitting his brain one after the other. Veronica hanging from her wrists. Jennifer Walters slapping him when he was sixteen and sliding his hand under her top. Tom Sizemore sliding his hands around a skinny girl’s neck as pictures of bunnies and little boys flash in the background. A woman whose name he’s long forgotten crying into a tissue that Keith hands her at the station as a bruise the size of her husbands fist blooms on her cheek. His mother’s eyes widening as she steps between him and his father for the first and last time. 

It’s not a conscious thought, it just happens, one minute he’s crouching on the ground, trying to gasp enough air in his lungs to breathe, the next he’s flying at Cormac, pinning the man to the ground and pounding fist after fist into his face. Again and again and again. 

“What’s got you…? So… out of… shape?” Comac grits out between hits, his hand rising to claw at the arm holding him down. “That someone got a girl… in your watch? Or that they… got… that girl?”

He almost wishes there was an answer for that question. It’s not about Veronica and it’s not about hurt little girls in general, who gets away with what in his little fiefdom or him coming in a day late and a dollar short _yet again_. It’s not even about the Fitzpatricks and their smug belief that they can get away with anything. It’s not about the look in Keith’s eyes. 

People have been hurt worse under his watch, they’ll be hurt again, and Lamb won’t even blink when he fills in that paperwork, dotting all the ‘i’s and crossing all the ‘t’s with precision. He’ll twirl his pen and probably snap at Sacks about weak coffee as he reads horrific medical reports. 

That’s the job. 

“Maybe.” Lamb shoves Cormac down to the ground and hefts himself up on his hip, enough to bring his hand up to his face and drop his elbow right into Cormac’s face. “I just don’t like you.”

Cormac goes limp and Lamb sits up on his haunches, breathing hard and deep, relishing the jagged feel of his bruised ribs grinding against each other. 

A small gurgle of blood pours out of Cormac’s mouth and then the man gives a bitter little chuckle. 

“What do you want me to do? Raise my hand as say ‘it was me!’, that make you happy, will it?” Cormac pauses to spit blood on the floor and when he turns back, Lamb grins. He knows that look. Resignation. Understanding. Acceptance. The man has no clue. “That doesn’t even cover it. Doesn’t cover the way she begged me to stop, the way she shook when I touched her, you got no idea what it’s like to break someone like that.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Lamb grunts a little as he shifts closer. “Am I supposed to tell you how clever you are, hurting a little girl? You’re nothing, you’re always going to be nothing, and I don’t feel anything but sorry for you.”

He grips Cormac’s hand, anchoring the attached forearm with his elbow, keeping the rest of him down with a knee in the ribs. 

“No, wait.” Lamb smiles as he wraps his fingers around the pinkie, feeling blood pumping through the knobs of knuckles and bone. “I don’t even feel that.”

He snaps the bone quickly, but not painlessly, and Cormac roars out loud. 

_Intimidate_.

 

“You will.” It’s a hissed promise. “You’ll care when they come looking for me. Everyone knows you’re out to get us. You think we caused trouble before? You haven’t met the Fitzpatricks yet. We’ll come after you, your little girl, and every person you’ve ever known.”

Lamb casually slides his fingers down over the bumps and ridges of Cormac’s hand until they close over the middle finger. 

“That’s where you’re wrong. No one’s gonna come looking for us, not your family, not the authorities, no one. See, I managed to get a warrant for your arrest today, signed all nice by the judge. And right now three well built goons with their faces hidden are driving your car out to Nebraska, making sure to get snapped by half a dozen traffic cameras on the way.”

He breathes, counting to three silently before pulling back and feeling the distinct crack. This time Cormac has obviously shored himself up for the pain, because he hisses, but it’s nowhere near loud enough to be satisfying or useful. 

“Nebraska?” Lamb asks brightly. “Hey, isn’t that where your good brother Michael lives? With his little gang? Won’t they be upset when you bring down a truckload full of police and FBI agents on their tail? They’ll fall all over themselves proving to us that they haven’t seen you. Same with all your contacts here, we’ll come down so hard they won’t even be able to piss sideways. They’ll hate you for running and they’ll hate you for leaving them to deal with it.”

The thumb bone takes a little more pressure, but he works it hard enough to get results, twisting the cartilage and tendons and feeling fluid slide into spaces that just shouldn’t be. Cormac doesn’t bother holding back on the scream. 

“Your car will be found eventually, probably a few months from now, a burnt out shell by the Mexico border. By then, even the authorities will have given up looking for you, your case will go down as unsolved, a few two bit criminals running from a warrant, and everyone else will just breathe a sigh of relief that we’re finally leaving them alone.”

He drops the useless limb and stands up, watching as Cormac twists himself into a ball. 

“And me? Well, I’ll just be the same old po’dunk Sheriff who let another guy go free, won’t I?”

Lamb manages to maneuver his over shirt above his head and stumbles towards the door as he wipes the worst of the mess away from his face. He calls the others into the hall and takes stock. They’re all fairing a lot better than him, give or take a split, bloody knuckle here and there, and he almost wishes for the simplicity of doing things the easy way. 

“Shit, man.” Navarro whistles through his teeth. “What the hell happened to you? I thought we had him tied?”

He can see the different reactions when they look at him, all of them more or less the same as Navarro’s. 

“We’re done.” He tries to keep most of the struggle out of his voice. “Go home.”

It’s not a request or a polite suggestion, even the dullest, thickest of them can see that. This is the last order and he’s not taking no for an answer. There’s a brief whisper of rebellion, a hush that rumbles through them. 

“Look.” He presses the crumpled shirt to his lip, feeling the all too familiar swelling of the split in its flesh. “This is a one time thing, you got it? This doesn’t mean we’re cool. I’m not your goddamn gang leader, I’m the Sheriff, and if I even catch a hint of any of you driving half a mile above the speed limit I won’t hesitate to throw your asses in jail. Got it? Tell me you understand, nod your head, whatever.”

“We’re not just leaving them here.” Echolls presses forward, buoyed by the rumble of agreement behind him. “Not after…”

_Maybe you can stop him doing something completely stupid._

“Yes. You are.” He doesn’t even blink. “That’s exactly what you’re doing. I’ve got a lot to do to process these guys and I don’t need you here when I do it. Now go, get out of here.”

Lamb gestures to the three of them huddling together, Veronica’s saviours. They’re no better and no worse than any of the others, a few split knuckles and a slightly feral look in their eye. 

“And you three? Go home, I mean it. Clean yourselves up, get some rest, whatever.” He glares, straightening his shoulders as much as he can. “You walk into her hospital room in the middle of the night like that and scare her, you’re not doing her any favors. Understand?”

They glare back, dissent humming under their skin, but they nod and amble out. 

Lamb waits until they’re all gone, motorcycles and car engines thrumming in the distance, waits until the building is empty save for himself and three somewhat damaged and incapacitated crime lords whimpering into the dust. 

Yeah, he thinks with only a hint of sarcasm and bitterness, process them. Right. Like any self-respecting law enforcement agency would take in those three bloody pieces of meat without a full investigation. Lamb might be slicker as a Sheriff than the county first bargained for, but he’s not that slick. 

Nobody is. 

Isolate. Interrogate. Intimidate. 

_Immolate_

Of course, he might be adding that last stage to Keith’s original structure, but a man has to improvise sometimes. 

***

She drifts up slowly; pulled to the soft, slow, steady sound of beeping beside her. 

Her eyes open to see a little light blinking on the screen of her IV machine. Veronica blinks, trying to make out the numbers and symbols in the half-light of the room. Not that she could make sense of them if she could; she just wants to know. Her brain feels heavy and slow. 

“Sh.” A nurse slips into the room and begins deftly pushing buttons. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it.”

She lets her head fall backwards to the pillow behind her. There’s nothing particularly comfortable about having to sleep sitting up, but she hasn’t graduated to her wrists being free agents and the art of using that little triangle pulley system that they showed her earlier will have to wait. While she’d like to sleep on her back, that little dream is going to be put on hold, because she much prefers the independence of not having to call for help every time she wants to wake up. 

It’s dark, but it’s not really quiet, even in her lonely little room. There are noises everywhere. The switchboard behind her bed, full of dials and switches and sockets for all manner of instruments she’s glad she doesn’t have to use, hums constantly. Soft, muted voices and footsteps slip through the door, which is slightly ajar and also letting in a beam of brighter light from the hallway outside. 

Somewhere, many rooms away, someone is coughing violently. 

“You go back to sleep.”

The nurse’s footsteps echo away from her room and she listens to the pattern of them, waits for them to stop. 

Her eyes drift over to the corner, where her dad’s been sitting all day and night, and she sees two eyes watching her, the slim beam of light mirrored in them. 

“You’re not my father.”

He chuckles softly. 

“Thank Christ for that, Mars.”

The chair squeaks on the floor when he shifts, pulling it closer to the bed. 

“So, what? You were just watching me sleep? That’s kinda creepy.” Her face turns towards the door. “And where is my dad?”

When she turns back, she can see bruises down the side of his face and swelling under his left eye. She doesn’t want to look any closer, doesn’t want to see traces of anything else that happened. Suddenly she’s got a million more questions and they have nothing to do with the man who sat by her side. 

“Visitor’s lounge.” Lamb shrugs at her, wincing at the movement. “I convinced him that stretching out on the full couch might be more comfortable than cramming himself into this thing. He didn’t argue much. Although, I did have to promise to call him the second anything changed.”

“And you’re breaking that promise already? Guess I can’t be surprised.” Then she switches tack, unable to hold back any longer. “Logan? Weevil? Wallace? Are they as bloody as you? Did they even make it back? Why are you here?”

His whole posture shifts in the shadows, growing larger and then sinking down with the breath he takes and exhales. As he deflates, she watches him shrink further down. In her entire memory, she can’t think of a time when he looked so defeated. 

“They’re fine. Not a scratch on them, I promise.” He sounds weary, too. “And I came back here to tell your dad. An instant update, I guess it was the next best thing to being there.”

And she doesn’t want to think about that, doesn’t want to think about her father running off to join whatever lynch mob they’d created, but she’s not naïve enough to think he’s not capable of it. She saw him with Aaron that night. Several times in her life, though she’ll never tell him, he’s scared her to the point of breathlessness. 

“Bullshit.” Deflection is always a good coping mechanism. “If that was the case, you’d be gone by now. Why are you here?”

His eyes glitter again, even as he falls forward, his whole body sagging until his head hits the mattress, denting the covers near her ankles. Her toes squirm in protest as she slowly drags her feet in, bending her knees up close to her body and away from him. It’s a soft whisper of sheets pulling and he doesn’t seem to notice. 

“Think what you want, Veronica” It’s a shrug, simple and casual and defensive. “If that’s what floats your boat these days.”

She’s seen that look before, recognizes it easily. Logan looked at her like that after beating down that ATF agent, after being caught on the bridge that night, after she confronted him about the drugs at Shelley’s party. Her dad had that look after Aaron, too, after tossing the last of her mother’s things in that box and out the door, after Alicia left for the last time. She’s seen it in her mother in a bar in Bristow and in Wallace and Duncan and Weevil and, not surprisingly, she’s seen it in Lilly’s eyes. 

He wants approval and he wants atonement, the two words blurring and blending together until they mean the same thing. 

The very thought that Donald Lamb, the coldest, cruelest man she knows that’s still alive, needs that sort of thing sends ice cold shivers up her spine. She doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to imagine what happened, because she has a feeling her nightmares would only get worse if she did. 

Everybody wants forgiveness, but they all want it for the wrong reasons. Out of everything that’s happened, she thinks this is what might finally turn her bitter. She’s made mistakes, she’s not blameless, there’s no way she’s anybody’s angel, she’s well aware of this fact, but she has never turned around and made it somebody else’s responsibility to make her feel better about her shortfalls.

And she’s sick of it. She’s just so sick of being the martyr for everybody’s guilt when they do nothing but turn around and spit at her for her troubles. 

“You look like shit.” His shoulders shake and she thinks it’s a laugh. “Which is appropriate, because I feel like shit. Exactly how bad am I, they had to put me right next to the nurses station?”

“How do you know?”

It comes out muffled, his voice echoing back in on itself from the covers. 

“Because I can hear them.” Simple answer for a simple question. “It’s about ten feet from my door to their congregating area. Which means I’m more serious than anyone else on the floor, doesn’t it?”

“Jesus.” One eye peels itself up off the cover to look at her. “You don’t ever fucking stop, do you?”

She uses her eyebrows to simulate a shrug. 

“Probably not.” Her voice is cool and calm and she thinks she sees the shadow of a smirk on his face. “You know, you’re not leaving here until you tell me what the hell you wrote on my arm.”

It’s starts off as a hiccup, a tired sound in the back of his throat, and ends up a mirthless little chuckle. 

“Laugh like you think this is funny.”

“But I don’t.” Her eyes narrow in frustration. “Do you know how many people have laughed at this thing? It’s driving me crazy.”

It only makes him laugh harder. 

***


End file.
